closer

you let me violate you, you let me desecrate you
you let me penetrate you, you let me complicate you
help me i broke apart my insides, help me i've got no soul to sell
help me the only thing that works for me, help me get away from myself
i want to fuck you like an animal
i want to feel you from the inside
i want to fuck you like an animal
my whole existence is flawed
you get me closer to god
you can have my isolation, you can have the hate that it brings
you can have my absence of faith, you can have my everything
help me tear down my reason, help me it's your sex i can smell
help me you make me perfect, help me become somebody else
i want to fuck you like an animal
i want to feel you from the inside
i want to fuck you like an animal
my whole existence is flawed
you get me closer to god

through every forest, above the trees
within my stomach, scraped off my knees
i drink the honey inside your hive
you are the reason i stay alive

with god (heresy) and all of his friends (march of the pigs) out of the way, the narrator can now work on destroying himself. through rampant, unmeaningful fucking, the narrator eradicates any sort of love associated with sex. also, the narrator becomes delusional for he feels that what he is doing is wanted or even like by the recipient ("you let me violate you, etc..."). the biggest mystery of the song, however, is embedded in the final stanza which stands alone from the rest of the song, lyrically and physically. I'll put more thought into those lines later.
-broken

the character spends so much of the downward spiral yelling at god... i think that closer is what he would replace god with. he rejects the christian ideal and presents us with an atavistic ideal, like one of those very old religions where the emphasis was on fertility/procreation/etc. i think that the character feels very out of touch with the conventional god because the conventional god is beyond his realm of understanding. the character is, from the very beginning, convinced that he is less than other people. thus, i think he thinks that the conventional "god" is too good for him, too high-and-mighty, too far away to ever hear him calling. instead he chooses to listen to his own yearnings and put the emphasis on things that give him momentary pleasure and take his attention away from how much he hates himself ("help me get away from myself/help me become somebody else").
-alexa

This is the perfect sex/fuck song about a purely sexual relationship. Nothing else is on his mind except the ultimate sexual experience ("i want to fuck you like an animal.") In the line "my whole existence is flawed" he is expressing that he has no faith no soul no other meaning in his life except to sexually dominate the woman in this relationship. He demands that she give him everything, [and] he expects everything ("you are the reason i stay alive.")
-crystal

I think Closer has to do with the narrator being someone who has sinned sexually with himself if you know what I mean. And now he wants to stop sinning in that manner and start having a sexual relationship with somone else. In doing this, god will forgive him of his sins. So in the lyrics he is explaining his sins and how they've affected him: "I broke apart my insides/ I've got no soul to sell." He then is calling for someone else to stop his sins: "Help me get away from myself/ I wanna fuck you like an animal." And he also explains how engaging in a sexual relationship with another person will help him to be accepted by God: "You get me closer to God". The rest of the lyrics basically explain the same concept.
-NINsanE

Now is the time for the degradation and the pain....make her feel as he felt ...make her want to die of shame.......he is a tortured soul who wants to be an angel...take her...need her...want her...be her...take all she has...be closer than anything...give in to the dark...be closer to god.
-DivinE

"through every forest, above the trees
within my stomach, scraped off my knees
i drink the honey inside your hive
you are the reason i stay alive"

i think this is saying the character is not ready to kill himself yet. he's playing with the idea and he has found a temporary 'safty' in the pleasures of sex with someone that he dosn't want to kill.
-hermes pan

I feel that in this song Trent is talking about the experience and plasure of sex, which is quite obvious, but also how this experience brings him "closer to god" even when that's not what is desired. Also the relationship between hurting somebody and obtaining pleasure out of it and not only that but this person, the victim, allows him to do so, sadomasochist relationship. After he, the narrator, has "used" this person he ends up returning some of what he took or at least adress it not only he takes but gives in return even though what he gives will probably cause pain on to the person who recieves it, "you can have my isolation / you can have the hate that it brings..." not with the intention of hurting the person as a priority but the pain as a price for the invaluable gift he has given to such person pain in return of pain!
This song is very intense and describes a relationship in which pain is one of the major factors but the person's sacrifice is apretiated and kind of rewarded. In the final part "Through every forest ..." i think he ends up confesing his "love" or feelings for the victim and probably the pain he inflicts on her/him is the only way he knows to express it at least the only way intense enough to express in a more closer way what the narrator feels not only for the person but for the whole experience. Also the music plays a very important role an the mining, of course, of the song the ascention and descention of the notes indicate the rising and falling before reaching what ever that might be probably detracting him self by choice and not by any external hand but by an internal desire which is still to be revealed.
-abby

I was working on a project on W. B. Yeats (a famous dead poet), and some of the lines reminded me of Trent and his lyrics. For example, here are a few lines from "Sailing to Byzantium":

Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is.

This, for more than the obvious reason that the words desire and animal were used in the same sentence, put me acutely in mind of Closer. The flesh is an animal riddled with instinct, but the heart is a vessel for distinctly human emotions, "an organ of fire", and the conflict and confusion that ensues from that is an important part of the song. And the next line of StB, "gather me into the artifice of eternity" reminded me of The Becoming. I think what Yeats is basically saying is that he is tormented by the pain of longing, mortality and imperfections of the world of life and craves a world of artificial, and therefore eternal, perfection, a world of art ("Byzantium")- with, of course, the usual ironic undertones, since the world of perfection and art is also a world devoid of vitality. What I feel from listening to Trent's lyrics is a similar sentiment, with a harsher twist. Trent is also plagued by the pains and flaws of existence - as most of us are - and he finds expression through a medium that is also very artificial and 'eternal', namely 'music', and not just that, electronic music. (Enter the old myth of 'Computers Are Flawless'.) But instead of reaching for perfection, his songs are rather a confirmation of imperfection, and thus, of inescapable vitality. He deliberately incorporates static, noise, distortion, etc. into his electronically 'mastered' music, and his tortured vocals, often closer to screaming than singing, apply the finishing touch. His choice to purposely insert 'human flaws' into a potentially 'flawless' form of art seems like a testament to life itself. Yeats referred to the world of flesh and blood as the "unpurged" world, and it's spellbinding (at least to me) that Trent's act of "purging", i.e. creating music through the sterility and flawlessness of computers, should bring him farther from Byzantium and closer to flesh and blood. Here are a few lines from another poem, entitled "Byzantium", that I think sheds light on the portrayal of human existence in Trent's songs:

All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins
-lyseia

My belief is that this song is about the desire to both corrupt and to keep pure something you care about. "you let me violate you, you let me desecrate you/you let me penetrate you, you let me complicate you." I think that he is talking about a virgin. Something he perceives as the ultimate in purity, but he can't understand why she would let that purity be destroyed. The most important line in this section is "you let me complicate you". Now that he has "deflowered" her, he has taken her into the complex world of sex and sexual relationships, trying to make it balance. I'll back this up with an experience of my own. there was an incident in my life where my boyfriend and I had been drinking, we were fooling around and he was attempting to convince me to have sex for the first time. Later on in the evening as he sobered up he exclaimed "oh! my god, I almost ruined you." "help me, i broke apart my insides/help me, i've got no soul to sell/help me, the only thing that works for me/help me get away from myself." His soul is shattered and this has been done through years of partaking in what he has, sex being a strong part. We as humans tend to set certain social standards, I believe he feel like he has sunk below those standards and therefore less of a human being. Sex is an escape from everything like this he feels. "i want to fuck you like an animal/i want to feel you from the inside/i want to fuck you like an animal/my whole existence is flawed/you get me closer to god." I believe that the majority of people have very violent desires that they would love to act out in sex. Again he thinks of himself as "flawed" perhaps for thinking these things and being honest with himself. "You get me closer to god." What is god? Purity and perfection is one wide acceptation. Fuck the virgin who equals purity that equals god. "you can have my isolation, you can have the hate that it brings/you can have my absence of faith, you can have my everything." He feels he has just brought this upon her by introducing her to the complexities of sex. "help me, tear down my reason/help me, it's your sex i can smell/help me, you make me perfect/help me become somebody else." Again sex as the escape, he can't think during the act, he doesn't want to think. He hopes that perhaps the good he sees in her will spread into him. "through every forest, above the trees/within my stomach, scraped off my knees/i drink the honey inside your hive/you are the reason i stay alive." He is striving for the perfection he sees her as. As long as she's here there is a chance she could change him into "something better".
-Tetsab