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About

Genius Annotation

John Darnielle wrote this song after working for a couple of years as a psychiatric nurse at the Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk, California, working with kids. He eventually also wrote a novel on the same premise as part of the Bloomsbury Publishing 33 1/3 series on Black Sabbath’s third studio album from 1971, “Master of Reality”.

In a Sept. 2015 NPR interview, Darnielle prefaced the song saying, “It’s a song that has a funny set-up, but I mean it a lot.”

In an interview with Salon, Darnielle explains the inspiration of the song:

Jeff and Cyrus [of “Death Metal Band”] were inspired by a real-life story of a friend of mine’s boyfriend. I stopped by her house one morning in high school in the 1980s, and she said that two elders showed up at her boyfriend’s house and said, “You’re coming with us.” And they took him to Utah, yanked him out of his daily life where he had a girlfriend and a life, and he woke up in a locked ward, 350 miles away.

Q&A

Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning

What did The Mountain Goats say about "The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton"?
Genius Answer

John Darnielle before performing this song at the Bowery Ballroom in New York, NY on March 30, 2011:

“It is a song, like a lot of my songs, about survival, and about looking into the face of people who do not wish you the type of survival you would like to have, and thinking toward them, ‘I wish you well, but I will not allow you to hold me down.”

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