In the song, “Symptom of Terminal Illness” by The Dillinger Escape Plan, the former lead singer Greg Puciato, talks about how the song is based on panic attacks. The song is from their album, Dissociation which was released in 2016. The album was their 6th and final album made from the band. The Dillinger Escape Plan broke up around late 2017. Around that time in a Revolver Interview, Puciato discusses,“I was not in the right mindset to be playing shows when we did the last Dillinger tour. I was having a lot of anxiety, panic attacks, hypochondria — all these weird things that I’ve never experienced before.” Since he was going through the band breaking up and the death of Chris Cornell who was a musician, his levels of panic and anxiety were getting worse. According to him, he was prescribed lexapro and xanax to control it.
Initially, I chose this song because it is based on anxiety and panic attacks, which basically falls into my idp disorder, Generalized Anxiety. Generalized Anxiety is when you have extreme levels of anxiety. It keeps you from doing daily activities because it causes lots of overwhelming. I also chose this song because when I first heard it, the rhythm of the song caught my attention. The lyrics of the song also made me feel emotional towards it because I feel like I understand the meaning of it. This song was not that much of a challenge to analyze because I really didn’t know anything about the band and the lead singer, but I kind of got an idea about what the song meant. The song also had some lyric repetition which made it a little easier for me to analysis. Puciato says, “The whole record is pretty dark and this is definitely one of the darker songs on there.” I agree with him because lyrics are indeed dark.
To begin with, the first set of lyrics are, “To those of you I loved/ This pains me to lose/I hate to feel used.” I think the lyrics mean that people can be your friends and supporters, but in the end everything turns out to become into complicated situations. Sometimes you feel like you need them with you because they have helped you through dark times, but you have to learn to let go of some people in your life even if it’s hard.
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To continue, the next set of lyrics are, “I’m frightened in sleep, thinking my world will be gone/Promise me I won’t die/I panic in dreams from when I was still young/Please don’t turn on that light/I can’t see it.” According to Puciato, these lines are referencing to a panic attack occurring. I think it means that anxiety can get too extreme that it starts to take over you and fills you in with lots of worrying and overthinking. I think these lyrics also mean that darkness is referring to death. When you close your eyes, it’s dark and you can’t see anything which reminds you of death. Being in the dark gives you the feeling of being alone and isolated from others which can cause panic. Anxiety can make you feel like your dying or losing yourself because it’s controlling you and making you feel lots of negativity.
As the song progresses, it says, “To those of you I’ve lost/that pained me to love/please know that I tried/please know that I tried.” Extreme anxiety can keep you from doing things in your life. It’s starts to make you feel distant towards others and it starts to consume you. I think the lyrics are trying to say that it’s hard to manage anxiety and panic attacks and having to lose loved ones wasn’t a choice. It was something that just happened because of all the unfortunate events that occur.
Later on in the song, it says, “Do you really think that I would leave you?/But I couldn’t stand myself/So I had to choose/Still you turn me on/The wild in your eyes/But now I can’t trust myself/To keep on the light/For us to see with.” As I stated before, it’s not just a choice to leave everything behind because of your problems, it’s for the best because you don’t want your problems to start affecting others. I think the lyrics mean that you can love someone so much that you keep yourself away from them to not affect them. You can try to keep everything in order but it can be very hard to act like everything is alright. Eventually you need to realize that you need to do what’s best for you and what best for your loved ones. The lyric, “The wild in your eyes” is personification. The eyes are being described as being wild but they can’t because it’s a human and animal attribute.
Ultimately, the song is about how anxiety consumes you and takes over your life. It can make you feel distant towards others and keep you from continuing your friendships. The song is also about how anxiety and panic attacks make you worry a lot and can cause you to have fear towards the darkness also known as death. “It’s already incredibly bizarre to have the song exist in the first place, so to go even deeper and talk about it would mean that I have to talk about my personal life and that’s just not something I’m willing to do,” Puciato says. This song has such a deep meaning for him since he can relate to it. This song can also relate to anyone else because it expresses how some people feel.
References
- Genius – Lyrics and analysis of “Symptom of Terminal Illness” by The Dillinger Escape Plan
- NCBI – Generalized Anxiety Disorder: Advances in Diagnosis and Treatment
- Mental Health Foundation – Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD)
- NCBI – The neurobiology of generalized anxiety disorder and ptsd: Evidence from neuroimaging studies
- Anxiety and Depression Association of America – Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)
- American Psychiatric Association – What are Anxiety Disorders?
- PubMed – Rhythm Therapy for Generalized Anxiety Disorder: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial
