Necromancy

Song Meaning

The narrator's parents are locked in a desperate, surreal attempt to reclaim the past, treating their grief like a dark art. The mother "invokes the name of a boy who's long been dead," while the father uses "sorcery that's been fueled by pure denial." Their actions are framed as a form of necromancy, a futile effort to bring back something irrevocably gone. The narrator sees through this charade, recognizing the futility and the destructive nature of their obsession. The central tension arises from the parents' refusal to accept reality versus the narrator's plea for them to move forward. The narrator begs them to "let him lie, to fall back and let him die" and to "let it go." This isn't just about mourning a lost child; it's about the parents' inability to acknowledge the present, specifically the narrator's own existence and identity. They are so fixated on the "boy who's long been dead" that they fail to see the person standing before them. The most striking aspect of the lyrics is the metaphorical use of necromancy to describe profound, unresolved grief and denial. The parents' "spells all sound like static," a jarring, meaningless noise that highlights the emptiness of their attempts. This imagery underscores how their efforts are not only ineffective but also isolating, creating a barrier between them and the narrator. The repeated phrase, "The boy you used to know was never even there," suggests a deeper complexity – perhaps the idealized memory of the lost child was never accurate, or that the parents are projecting their own needs onto a phantom. Ultimately, these lyrics resonate because they capture the painful experience of being unseen by those closest to you, especially when their grief or denial creates a wall. The narrator's desperate pleas, "they don't see that they're losing me," and "He's dead but I'm not gone," are a raw expression of their struggle for recognition. The parents' obsession with the past comes at the direct cost of their relationship with their living child, a devastating consequence that the narrator desperately wants them to acknowledge.