From an interview in April, 2010:
One aspect of each album that always sticks out is the sheer depth of emotion involved with each song, musically and vocally. What are some of the inspirations you draw from when writing the music? Does Ray take the finished music and add to it or is there another process involved when composing?
Van Dyk: I do think it’s one of the things that makes Redemption what we are. Musically, I continue to be intrigued by combining very heavy, riff-oriented metal with strong melody and big choruses, and by having technicality but subjugating it to the needs of the song.(...) Our lyrics are about human frailty: fears, regrets, and the like, but also hope and triumphs. All of these are done in a way that people can relate to, which is critical to establishing the emotional link with our audience. Our songs, in a sense, are all relationship songs: they either deal with how we relate to ourselves or to others. Even “Leviathan Rising” is about how people relate to each other in the context of society and government.
From another interview, 2009:
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif] [FONT="] How important is it to you that people pay attention to the lyrics apart from listening to the music?[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif] [/FONT]
[FONT="] Nick: It’s a nice plus, but it’s not critical. We aren’t a “message” band per se, although there is a song on the new CD that is probably the only political song we’ll ever do (Leviathan Rising).
Last one:
[/FONT] I hope I didn't mishear this one but I think you used samples from the movie "V for Vendetta" in your song "Leviathan Rising", didn't you? What can you tell us about the song and the use of these samples? I think the movie was more or less panned in the media but in my opinion there are still a lot of important ideas represented (which mostly trace back to the graphic novel of course...). What are your thoughts about it?
You are correct, that is where some of the samples come from. The others come from news footage of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
The movie was actually pretty well reviewed, although there was some controversy, particularly from hardcore fans of the graphic novel on which it was based. I think it’s an extremely compelling story with a very important message about government, which is why I was moved to write about it on this CD. Leviathan Rising is about the role of government in society. The title comes from the book Leviathan, by Thomas Hobbes, which is one of the most famous books in political philosophy. It asserts that life without government would be a dangerous place where people’s worst instincts resulted in a great deal of enmity, and as a result we should be glad to surrender a large amount of our freedom to the state in the interest of maintaining order. As you can imagine from the sound bites in the song – which come from the movie V for Vendetta and from news footage of the Tienanmen Square massacre – I don’t agree with this point of view. Government has overstepped its bounds both socially and economically and we are operating, in the US, with fewer freedoms than we have ever had. The package of economic reforms that has been pushed through over the past couple of years is financially disastrous and wrong-headed. Meanwhile the civil liberties that were wiped out with the prior administration moved the country in the wrong direction. What’s saddening is that very few people draw the connection between the two. The problem isn’t the agenda of a President. The problem is the nature of government: the bureaucracy exists to grow, and Guantanamo Bay and the proposed healthcare legislation in the US are just two sides of the same problem.
