Ogre explained at a VIP meetup once that his lyric style was partially informed by growing up with undiagnosed dyslexia and his untreated struggle to read and write, paraphrasing from memory he basically said he started writing his poetry focused on individual sounds rather than entire structured sentence and that was a lot of how his plays on words and the weird semi coherent rambling nature of his lyrics came about. I think it makes his writing so unique.
I’ve said it before but I think that Goneja is one of the best examples of Ogre’s lyric style, the lyrics just feel like this hazy somewhat lucid dream and the way they run into each other line by line and sound by sound is just to die for:
But honestly tons of his lyrics evoke this. I was looking at Past Present the other day and just so enamored but the way the lyrics ramble on and on with these semi-connected metaphors and symbols and how it’s not necessarily sensical if you look at each individual line but altogether creates these very distinct sentiments and concepts all circling around each other:
The funny thing is also that Ogre of course is credited for helping write a portion of the songs off of Ministry’s The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste, and I am almost completely positive that he wrote this portion verbatim in the song Breathe, because it is so standoutedly Nivek’s lyric style:
We are talking a band whose main lyricist writes shit like “In through the window, quiet as a mouse, no sound stirring throughout the house” and “I really want to break your jaw, I think I’m gonna have to break your jaw, gonna punch you till your face is raw, gonna punch you till I break the law” (LMFAO). I could actually write a damn essay on Al’s lyric style as well but that’s for another time. The point is “Hope springs eternal but there’s no conviction / Action mistaken for ransom is paid” very much evokes Nivek to me. The only other alternative is that it was Chris Connelly as his lyrics are also very flowery and poetic (“The open machine wounds unconscious diameters drained / The murder eclipsed by the moment of truth for a fragment of pain”), but I feel like “the world is insane” is just such a Nivek line. His combination of these sort of playful quips and use of words like creepy or insane combined with this otherwise complex lyric style is super distinct.
There is also something about Ogre’s lyrics that I love which is that like, sometimes the lyrics seem too confusing when you first hear them but if you actually know what they’re about they start to make more sense and you can follow the thought process. There is way more coherency than you might first expect. Like did you know the song “The Daze” is about writer’s block and procrastination?
Or like, some of them are obvious enough but actually getting into the lyrics you start being able to piece together meanings in ways even more complicated than on the surface, like Hexonxonx obviously being about environmental degradation and specifically the big fossil fuel companies and pollution but you start to get more and more out of these little fragments that Ogre is narrating through:
Same can be said for First Aid and the AIDS crisis.
And obviously none of this is really deep insight, I’m kinda just stating the obvious but ugh I just love the way his lyrics flow and connect in this sort of dreamlike semi coherent fragmented structure… so so so cool and unique and inspiring.
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