Demon Hunter - Thorns Lyrics

Bitter thoughts became your every waking breath
Save the nights your hollow dreams revealed the sweet release of death
In your thoughts you played a symphony of self
But your soul had bled a darker song of close to nothing left

Oh, The deliverance of blade and flame, your love
And greater is the blood

[Chorus:]
You'll find it in the veil of night where solitude is born
In the emptiness of broken flesh, at the mercy of the thorns
You'll find it in the veil of night where solitude is born
In the emptiness of broken flesh, at the mercy of the thorns

Every line a path into an empty heart
Where the words of now forgotten love fall silent in the dark

Oh, The deliverance of blade and flame, your love
And greater is the blood

[Chorus]

Sister, don't you sleep through your own eulogy
Don't sever what you are for what you couldn't be

[Chorus]

[In the few months before I began writing lyrics for this record, I was hearing a lot about cutting. This, for those who don't know is the act of inflicting pain on one's self (often times by cutting with a knife, or burning with a lighter) in order to take their mind off of some emotional pain. Although I don't personally know anyone who has dealt with this (that I am aware of), the idea of writing a song about it was really placed on my heart. I guess I thought I might be able to speak to some young people about this particular issue.

I couldn't help but draw a connection between someone wanting to inflict pain on themselves and Jesus having been sacrificed so that we wouldn't need to bare the guilt of sin. My thought was that Christ had already been cut for us, so there was no need for us to inflict pain on ourselves. That work has been paid for in full by the cross.

The chorus lyrics hope that this person (represented by a young female in the song) might find this truth in her darkest of times, when she realizes that the emptiness she hoped would leave after inflicting this pain, still remains. Her flesh, broken, is emptiness. Christ's flesh broken is mercy for us.

For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
-Colossians 1: 19, 20]