Worsening

I must admit, I was hesitant to discuss this song at first. Baths (Will Wiesenfeld) is a very complex artist and Obsidian, his third studio album, is a very dark and brooding collection of songs that convey emotions I have never felt. Nonetheless, his message is extremely provocative and captivating. "Worsening," the opening song from Obsidian, is about Wiesenfeld's inability to find meaning in a life that has done nothing for him. He finds no purpose behind the common man's faith, and as a result contemplates suicide. 

The song opens with:

Birth was like a fat, black tongue,
Dripping tar and dung and dye
Slowly into my shivering eyes.

In this opening verse, Baths uses an extended simile to express the discontent he felt from birth. The multifaceted imagery creates a concept of the black, malicious burdens that are placed on Wiesenfeld from the day he was born. As it is, the image of a baby being brought into a cold and dark world, shivering, makes the listener uncomfortable, yet you become intrigued by Weisenfeld's low, shuddering voice.

I might walk upright
But then again
I still might try to die.

In this moment, Baths scrutinizes his choice to go on in a world that brings about nothing but severe disappointment and depression. This stanza is extremely effective through its use of ambiguity. This ambiguity stems from his own confused mental state, and it keeps the audience unclear of his intentions. As a man with no purpose (and aware of such), he is debating whether or not to continue going about his life, and whether or not that will still lead him to suicide.

Never prayed, never paid any attention,
Never felt any affection,
Never a lot of thought to life. 

Baths expresses here the bland tone of his life that led him to feel so unsatisfied. A man with no faith, he cannot care; he cannot love. He employs an anaphora to effectively talk about his inability to feel. By beginning every phrases with "Never," we understand that the simple joys in our lives that we find impossible not to feel at times are completely void from the artist's life.

Where is God when you hate him the most?
When the mouths in the earth come to bite at my robes,
Hell that sits below, of you would do well to bellow
At the cold, the lifeless, the worsening souls. 

This last stanza is surely my favorite in the song, yet the most discomforting. Baths observes that God cannot exist if He does not respond to those who attempt to communicate with Him. He (as Baths puts it) does not punish those who hate nor does He reciprocate those who devote their love to God. By personifying the earth in association with Hell, Baths is practically inviting Hell to take him and the other "lifeless [and] worsening souls" to its depths. Banishing those souls to Hell, as Baths perhaps believes, would signify that God does in fact exist.

While I myself do not empathize with Baths in this song, his conveyance beyond lyrics by using discordant notes and syncopated rhythms creates a very unresolved and distressed song. "Worsening" by Baths is one of the most interesting and poetic songs I've heard in the past few years, and the musicality of his work in both Obsidian and Cerulean makes Baths an extremely eccentric and peculiar up-and-coming artist.