Does Anyone Know..?

[LateralUndertow]

Does anyone know what this song is about. I have no clue and am interested, it's one of my top five favorite songs! Thanks.

[bdm56]

To me, this song seems like it is about an abusive relationship where the abused person is trying to end it and leave but the abuser wont let him/her.

Crawling away and sliding away instead of walking or running away seems to represent the general weakness of the one leaveing and the abuser says that he/she does not care about what the other wants or needs.

The last lines of the song are like an order to someone who has just been beaten down.

[chewy]

to answer your question, i feel that, at least for my reasons behind it, that i have got this song pinned down. the most emotional part for me in the whole song is where maynard sings "say you won't go." it shows that the speaker, who has threatened to keep the other party in the relationship by force and fear and guilt, when you break all of that down, needs them so much that he'll try any means of keeping the person in the relationship. in this emotional section of the lyrics he begs the person not to leave him. when that doesnt work he resorts once again to trying force, guilt and fear. check out my website and this will make a little more sense.

[ragna16]

It's a love song about loving someone but not loving someone enough to let them go, so you mortally wound them emotionally, and in the end they're not the same.

[Hyatir]

In Bottom, the speaker was depressed becuase of the way he treated his friend in Prison Sex (his response to his own betrayal in Intolerance) and he tries to make himself close to someone, becoming vulnerable in the process but knowing that an existence sustained by hate, guilt, and weakness keeps you "alive and at the bottom". In Crawl Away, I see the speaker trying to connect to a person that could be the object of the sexual (mental/emotional) abuse in Prison Sex. Obviously, being hurt once, this person leaves, thinking the speaker means to exert his power and control him again; the speaker however, wants only a solid relationship with another and ends up threatening, pleading, and doing whatever he has to do to get the other person back. After sinking underwater in Prison Sex, and reaching bottom in Bottom, maybe the speaker hasnt fully escaped the Water (whatever that may symbolize) and he is merely "dancing in the edges of the swamp"?

[Stranglehold]

this is definitely not a love song.
for me, this song is about rape.

the entire song the "subject" is trying to crawl and slip away or escape.
at the climax the narrator says "got you in a stranglehold" and then "what you want and what you need dont mean a fuck to me" and finally, "i can see your back is turning. if i could i'd stick the knife in". i dont think theres love here, just uncontrollable sexual desire.
the "knife" is a metaphor for the speakers "tool" (if you catch my drift)
the speaker wants the subject to consent, but if they dont it doesnt matter. the speakers going to take what he wants.

what i consider the "climax" starts at about 4:10 and ends about 4:32. notice right after the climax the tempo slows down but its feels/sounds very rythmic and almost sexual. it reminds me how i feel right after sex: spent.

this is my favorite tool song. it is so intense it still gives me goosebumps after 10 years of listening to this song over and over..

[flipmojo]

i guess thats one way to look at it....

it seems the song is about frustration with someone he cared about deeply (sexually? i don't know?). there may have been some rejection involved. if he was in a darkened state already, it would possess him to want to harm what he cared for, hence the spiritual/emotional warfare begins.



wrote a song about it.... want to hear it, here it go.

[Kostia]

You HAVE to consider that Tool often uses not just knives and water as a metaphor. Sex too. Or other forms of interaction like abuse. So this song doesn't have to be about rape in the physical sense. Or even in the mental in some ways.

For me this song is what keeps me true to my friends when I realize I'm slipping away because I don't want to hurt anyone. When I first started listening to the lyrics, I was reminded of a band I was playing in. It was going nowhere for me and I decided I would crawl away, slowly weening them of me to get out for good. But then over time they knew what I was doing and the lyrics, "If I could I'd stick a knife in," make me think of how they aren't yet willing to betray me even though they foresee that I'll be leaving them.

So this is actually one of the most meaningful songs out there to me, right next to Sleeping Beauty of APC, Pushit, and I Think by DotN.

[orenge_pop]

"doesn't mean fuck to me. "............no

for me, its just the situation im in. the love i have for my family is the hatred i have...i love to hate them...the reason is they are all two faced egotistical hypocritical jerk offs. and they would stick the knife in the minute i turned my back. and the "crawled away and slipped away" in the song is me leaving them trying to get me to come back, but in the end . what i want and what i need doesnt mean fuck to them.......now i am not saying the song is about me, but i think its about a person leaving-another person wanting them back, for false reasons because their feelings do not mean anything to them.

but in the words of dennis miller, thats just my opinion i could be wrong.

[dissociation]

Originally posted by ragna16
It's a love song about loving someone but not loving someone enough to let them go, so you mortally wound them emotionally, and in the end they're not the same.

i pretty much agree. it seems like a slight over-exaggerated song about how pissed you are when someone is leaving (either permanently or temporarily) you. we all have been like that before - so pissed we wish we could shove a knife in someone's back.

[EmbraceTdOxOmL]

OBSESSIVE INFATUATION

Just being miserable and knowing it and to obsessed and infatuated to let it go. Not really a specific situation (another person, an addiction, a hobbie, a criminal record, a band called TOOL, ect.) but just generalizing it using "you" and "me" as examples.

No wait... nevermind...

[Metalanarchist]

I look at the song as an expression of a dominant male's relationship with a battered woman, who now is finally beginning to assert herself — if only to simply try to crawl away. She doesn't want to "play" this abuser's game anymore. He "tried to keep [her] down" ... what she wants means nothing; he holds the power. Or he did — she is trying to flee to safety, somewhere away from him, and he is pursuing her because now he is realizing that he is as dependent on his woman as he wanted her to be to him: "Say you won't go."

One of the best lines is "This is my love for you." Maynard's sarcasm is at its most cutting here, because this relationship resembles nothing like love, which is about giving, not taking.

I don't view the knife as a metaphor for the rapist's "tool" — in this context, I interpret it to be simply the typical expression of rage that comes from a controlling person when their will is thwarted. If they can't have their toy anymore, they'll break it. Stephen King's "Gerald's Game" or "Misery" are good stories that demonstrate this dynamic.

This has always been one of my favorite Tool songs off Undertow, because it is the most aggressive musically and lyrically. Truly a powerful song-story.

[Hogpile]

I think this song is about not giving a flying fuck about someone, but saying that you do, so you can use them and drain them of everything worth taking, and then leave them broken and remembering what a big piece of their life you took away.