meaning

[milair47]

I've been listening and thinking about what it means, can anybody tell me what its mening is?

[endless_nameless]

I think the original version had to do with a person trying to deliver a message that desperately needed hearing, but was extremely hard to get through. I don't know what the message was supposed to be in the original, or if there even is one, but I'm guessing it probably refers to some myth or legend, what with the references to the Norse god Thor and such.

The Tool version takes this theme of delivering an important message at all costs, regardless of the trials and sacrifices involved, and personalizes it to focus on the band's journey and the message they are desperately trying to get through. I think this is the message of enlightenment - meeting your higher self, recognizing that we are essentially divine and one with god/nature/eternity - which is a message that is ubiquitious among nearly all the myths, religions and ancient cultures of the world, but is conspiciously absent from our own - or, in other words, locked in a place where in no one goes.

For example, the lyrics "lock the door, kill the light/no one's coming home tonight" can be taken as meaning that no one is choosing the spiritual path and "coming home." But the band will "ask no quarter" (not give in for anything) in getting the message through, because without the divine "all our lives are growing cold."

The most obvious clue here is the lyrics "They bring the news that must get through/Dying peace in me and you." This especially makes sense when you think that Salival foreshadowed Lateralus, and No Quarter is the last real song on the disc (LAMC is a skit, and Maynard's Dick is more a secret song b-side). Hence the message they are bringing that must get through is Lateralus, which attempts to uncover something that has largely been hidden in our modern secular society.