01. / 02. Introit / Prophecy At 1420 MHz

[sowhereareyouliving?]

Agreed! It's such a complete statement of a track: mysterious intro, rock-solid foundation, thundering apocalyptic mid-section, heartbreaking outro. And all this while having influences / references but sounding like nothing else ever recorded, and the production punch of some higher power

[egbdf]

At about 0:09 in Introit right before the 'logo' melody comes in on top of the arpeggio thing, I seem to hear a very faint short bit of that same 'zooming in' sound that happens at 0:20

[Electronic Dave]

I swear this track gets better every time I hear it...it feels more powerful than before, and I guess being at the beginning of the album affects my mind / feelings for up coming other tracks.

On another note it seems a weird coincidence that the band Muse have a new album coming out this month with tracks called 'The Wow Signal' (1420MHz) and another called Hexagons

[Den]

I listened in full for the fourth time today and was also feeling how Prophecy At 1420 Mhz has become even more effective in the context of the album.

[Daily Mail reader]

Reminds me vaguely of Wire circa 154.

[noveltywave]

So what is the meaning of the actual prophecy? Just cool old tunes style vocal sampling that sounds cool but has no deeper meaning (a la Neon Genesis Evangelion riffing on Christianity because it was exotic to a Japanese audience and had no deep meaning), or did Mike specifically sequence the words into this order to make a message that has an intended meaning? Who is speaking? What are they trying to say? Why is it a “prophecy” of the future? Why is it on the Wow Signal frequency?

Or again, is it just old tunes shenanigans that was made because it sounds aesthetically cool.

[Samplehunter]

Introit is the BoCest album opener since Ready Lets Go.

[Waterbagel]

anyone else feel like bender listening to the stars stack right when the robot god voice starts talking




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[rogerniner]

So what is the meaning of the actual prophecy? Just cool old tunes style vocal sampling that sounds cool but has no deeper meaning (a la Neon Genesis Evangelion riffing on Christianity because it was exotic to a Japanese audience and had no deep meaning), or did Mike specifically sequence the words into this order to make a message that has an intended meaning? Who is speaking? What are they trying to say? Why is it a “prophecy” of the future? Why is it on the Wow Signal frequency?

Or again, is it just old tunes shenanigans that was made because it sounds aesthetically cool.

It makes me think of the Fermi paradox. Like we stretched beyond ourselves and went looking for the existence of a higher, possibly extraterrestrial being, and whoops, we found them, or rather, THEY found us.

[rogerniner]

I'm way behind on this thread so pardon me if this has already been discussed, but can anyone else hear a vocal sample at :03 on Prophecy in the left channel? I can't believe I'm just now noticing it!!

It sounds like "<a single word I can't make out>" then "let's turn around". The vocal samples do continue in the left channel for quite a while in that track, it's really hard to decipher them though.

I tried to isolate the vocals, and I could only get the first one at :03. It's very garbled, but it sounded like "It's over". I'm still trying to get the second one picked out.

[astral deeps]

I am almost positive I found a pretty prominent sample source for many elements of this track. It's this song off the soundtrack for Baraka. I'm a huge fan since seeing it in 65mm years ago, and my brain definitely associated many of the tracks to Baraka specifically, so I believe this makes sense. Here's the song:
Throughout the piece, there are many vocal formants, overtones, and different timbres going on, like "Oh", "Ah", and specifically, that hissing sort of sound that's very present in the beginning of the piece. I'd assume they sampled multiple parts of the song, and play them in various ways throughout almost all of Prophecy. Even the heavily bit crushed "classic BoC" style pad that comes in at 1:19 may be a sample from this. Let me know what you think!

[Den]

Wow. I hear it, especially at 12:30. The beginning of Prophecy always sounded like an explicit ‘om’ sound to me.

[astral deeps]

Whoa, yea, you're right about that time stamp in particular.

[747Music]

So what is the meaning of the actual prophecy? Just cool old tunes style vocal sampling that sounds cool but has no deeper meaning (a la Neon Genesis Evangelion riffing on Christianity because it was exotic to a Japanese audience and had no deep meaning), or did Mike specifically sequence the words into this order to make a message that has an intended meaning? Who is speaking? What are they trying to say? Why is it a “prophecy” of the future? Why is it on the Wow Signal frequency?

Or again, is it just old tunes shenanigans that was made because it sounds aesthetically cool.

A prophecy doesn't necessarily mean a foretelling of the future. It's a statement of what is as an absolute. Whether it is regarding something that has already happened, is happening, or hasn't happened yet, it doesn't matter. All that matters is that it's spoken as truth.

It's on the Wow Signal frequency because that is where our understanding of science tells us that potentially timeless messages could be sent. Not just signals from far away, but from a long long time ago...... in a galaxy far away. (sry, had to finish the quote lol)

I think they are trying to establish a baseline for what they believe god and our spirituality stem from. I think they are also making a statement of our impermanence. "Nothingness, the absolute truth." This goes against the teachings of the majority of religions that support the idea of some form of our own eternal existence. So accepting nothingness means being freed from the clutch of their will. Humans will do a lot of crazy things to try to live forever, but that's not a temptation when you embrace your own temporary existence instead. This is just my guess, of course. I do feel like the end of the album describes the process of regaining your inner child that was lost when the twisted things in this world forced you to grow up. I posted about it in more detail the Arena Americanada thread.

[tvsr]

At the 1:23 mark, could the voice be saying: S.O.S.?

[♄ope keeper]

2025 fan video

[WATER_CAN-_-]

[ryetronics]

2025 fan video

Whoa! Very interesting!

[Wildfire]

2025 fan video

No way, very Beattyesque.

[Redd Panderson]

Seeing the similarity between that video and the one for Prophecy (and the fan New Seeds cover + video // the Tape 05 video) makes me think of how the promotional material for Inferno seems to have leaned into the fan mythos for the band: "After 13 years of silence from the compound..."

It seems consistent with the "feedback" idea of plugging the output back into the input and getting something exaggerated out. Visually, it's like the overblown photo imagery. Sonically, it's like the feedbacking delay signal. Artistically, they're taking the stuff fans filled the BOC informational void with and are using that as material.

And, thematically, again it reminds me of how our inner demons come from suppressing things or continually engaging in habit (output being directed inward) rather than healthily expressing and working through this stuff to overcome it (output being directed outward).

I like this motif!