Unreal Unearth is Hozier’s third studio album released in August 2023, the album was heavily influenced by Dante Alighieri’s Inferno which describes Dante’s journey through the 9 circles of hell guided by Virgil. 16 songs which start with the descent and end with the ascent into and out of hell. Here in this article, I will walk you through the album and my opinions on the meanings of the songs alongside my favourite lyrics.
De Selby Part 1 & 2
The first two songs come under the label of ‘descent’ despite the different musical tones of the songs, Part 2 becoming much more upbeat and ‘funky’, they both represent the theme of metamorphosis. The idea of being wrapped in darkness with a lover where neither counterpart understands where they, as a human body, begin and end, falls in line with this being descent and the light of love merges into the darkness of lust as they fall to hell. The “empty space” is suddenly being filled by “someone” although they cannot quite tell who it is in the darkness. The Gaelic that ends De Selby Part 1 speaks to this metamorphosis as Hozier translated as ‘although you are bright and light you come to me like nightfall’. De Selby Part 2 rounds off with the speaker’s understanding that “if I was any closer… I could only lose me” as they fall until the eternal darkness of hell, “I’d block the sun” for their love, and thus they descend.
3) First Time
This beautiful song represents our first circle of hell: Limbo, where the residents are have never known God and are therefore punished by being forced to live in darkness and be in desire of new life and light. This sensory annihilation is hinted at by the reference to the River Lethe, in the Underworld, where souls drink from to forget their past life, they are in desire of something unattainable as every time they near redemption or reincarnation they are “ripped out by the stem”. Despite all attempts to escape, there is no regeneration for them and they are condemned to persist in their trapped life.
4) Francesca
Francesca belongs to the second circle of hell: Lust, where the souls are subjected to being tossed around in an eternal storm without reason. The namesake of this song is Francesca de Rimmi and her lover Paolo Malatesta, the two falling in love was seen as an act of lust, but here Hozier chooses to humanise and give a voice to the lost souls. These lovers are willing to face the punishment that awaits them in death to remain loyal to each other “If I could hold you for a minute darling, I’d go through it again”. The whirlwind of their love is emphasised by the cyclical nature of the last lines in the song “Heaven is not fit to house a love like you and I”, suggesting that Heaven is too pure for a love such as theirs.
5) I, Carrion (Icarian)
This song employs the myth of Icarus to extend Hozier’s exploration of the second circle of hell. The myth of Icarus follows a young boy who flies too close to the sun, which melts the wax in his wings, resulting in his death. From the beginning of the song, the speaker accepts the fall and the hurt that will follow if they can be with their lover, who holds up the very Earth itself. Icarus being used here could be the suggestion that perhaps, with love, you must be careful to not give too much of yourself too soon, or else you face the heartache of falling. In response to this being placed in the Lust section is that the speaker loved too fast and too much and to be punished has to fall away from their lover to hell where they can no longer see “what was holding up the ground”.
6) Eat Your Young
Eat Your Young falls into the third circle of hell: Gluttony, to me it is Hozier’s criticism of a capitalistic society where adults are so quick to use children as pawns in their ‘culture war’. “Skinning the children for a war drum Putting food on a table selling bombs and guns”. The idea is that the elders on Earth are essentially raising children to serve the companies that exploit them and that the army is enlisting children to lead them to their deaths. Capitalism rules all and by raising children in this sense of complicity with a corporate society, you limit them and leave them to accept this which is why it would be “quicker and easier to eat your young” as it would be less painful for them to die a quick death than live an extensive exploited life.
7) Damage Gets Done
Hozier collaborated with the incredible Brandi Carlile to create the 7th song, which fits into the fourth circle of hell: Greed. This song tells the story of two people being young and reckless without being concerned of short-term consequences. However, the chorus takes on a wider worldview of how the youth are constantly blamed for the unstable state of society, arguing that they are “being blamed for a world we had no power in”. Similarly to the views in Eat Your Young, the greed of the corporate world is the reason society is the way it is.
8) Who We Are
This song sits in the fifth circle of hell: Wrath which comes as Dante makes the realisation that his actions in travelling through hell could cause him to be permanently tortured. This circle contains two types of people, those quick to anger “Oh Christ, hold me like a knife”, and those who spent their lives sullenly and without true purpose “This phantom life”.To me, this song explores the darker aspects of love, travelling through the darkness with no purpose other than “chasing someone else’s dream”. So, perhaps, this song is a reflection of how love can be all-consuming and you lose ambition because of how absorbed you become in a lover. Only feeling this loss after you die and realise that you forgot to live “You only feel it when it’s lost”.
9) Son Of Nyx
We now enter the sixth circle of hell: Heresy and this song is a moment of reflection now that we are halfway through the album. The darkness we have reached is emphasised by the titular Nyx being the Greek god of Night. The echoes of all the previous songs we have heard allow listeners, and Dante, to pause and consider what the experiences and encounters, so far, have meant. Snippets of songs to come are a potential reference to the fact that fortune tellers would go to the sixth circle, and while condemned there they can see the fate of the album.
10) All Things End
All Things End also falls into the sixth circle of hell because of Hozier’s constant message in this song that nothing is permanent. The song emphasises that no experience, relationship or friendship can last forever because death acts as the ultimate barrier, the nature of life is that it is finite, “all things end All that we intend is scrawled in sand” their intentions are made to washed away by the sea or blown over by the sand. This aligns with Heresy because Christian teachings often preach that the soul lives on in the afterlife, the view in All Things End presumes there is no life after death.
11) To Someone From A Warm Climate (Uiscefhuaraithe)
The seventh circle of hell is violence and, according to Dante, is split into three rings: violence against neighbours, violence against yourself and violence against God. This piece of music is a gut-wrenching song that serves to mourn the loss of a lover and finding no comfort in the dreams that follow emphasising the ache of loneliness. Violence appears in this in two ways, the violence of extremes in temperature, the cold (Uiscefhuaraithe) of being alone and the extreme heat of being suffocated in a relationship “breath heat the air until You’d feel it getting thin”. Furthermore, the violence portrayed belongs in the second ring “the awful things we do to make the head go quiet” suggesting the speaker has taken to harming themselves to know true quiet in during the relationship and in the aftermath.
12) Butchered Tongue
In slight contrast to Uiscefhuaraithe, Butchered Tongue sits in the first ring of the seventh circle, where violence is done against neighbours. The lyricism creates the sickening imagery of how Irish rebels in the, 1798 Wexford Rebellion, had their ears severed as a form of torture. “The ears were chopped From young men If the pitch cap didn’t kill them” Pitchapping was when hot tar was forced upon a person’s head, allowing it to cool, and then hastily removing it, this resulted in them “being buried without scalp”. The violence of cultural erasure is particularly emphasised in this song as the last verse symbolises that the language of Gaelic has had permanent damage done, as fewer speak it now.
13) Anything But
This upbeat song belongs to the 8th circle of hell, Fraud. The lyricism and the message of the song itself represents the circle because for a first time listener, to all intents and purposes, the song comes across as a love song of dedication and caring. However, upon analysing the lyrics, we discover that this is really a song about distancing yourself from a partner and imploring them to do the same, “go look another way”. “If I had his job, you would live forever” the job being to deliver death, even as someone who decrees who lives and dies, they would allow this partner to live as long as they never had to see them again. The false message conveyed through the joyous tone of the song is why it sits in Fraud.
14) Abstract (Psychopomp)
This song also fits the 8th circle of hell for the deceptive nature that the Earth offers. Abstract centres around the story of a driver who holds an animal they, mistakenly, hit with their vehicle. They watch as the life leaves its eyes “the creature still moving that slowed in your eyes”. Psychopomp is a mythological term for a guide of souls to the place of the dead, the title reflective of the fateful story told in the song. The themes of the fit Fraud because the “The Earth from a distance See how it shines” the Earth shines from a distance, but in reality nature is full of as much death as it is life.
15) Unknown/Nth
We have met the final, most brutal, circle of hell, Treachery, this circle of hell is a frozen wasteland of pure dark “frozen like an angel to me”. A gut-wrenching song, a true lament that speaks to having your heart broken by someone you trusted so wholeheartedly. The pain behind this song is so evident that it sits so well in Treachery because it presents a complete and utter betrayal, the belief the speaker had in their relationship emphasises the heartache and longing here “where a blinding light shone on you every night”. The speaker here cannot accept that someone they held in such high regard, as an “angel” stooped so low to betray them “Do you know, I could break beneath the weight Of the goodness, love, I still carry for you?”, their refusal of this brutal end to a relationship is killing them.
16) First Light
And we Ascend, this song comes as a somewhat relief after the heartwrenching album. The speaker has come to accept that they must part with their lover and has begun to see the good in everyday life again. We understand through First Light that, like Dante’s journey, all things must end and we face a form of reconciliation of the speaker being able to feel and see the light again. “The sky is set to burst, the gold and the rust The colour erupts You filling my cup, the sun coming up”
My Overall View
Unreal Unearth is one of the most incredible albums I have had the privilege of listening to. Hozier manages to encapsulate Dante’s journey through hell while paralleling a speaker’s experience with the loss of love. The classical and intertextual references perfectly allow listeners to understand the meanings of each song. His criticism of capitalism, the corporate world, and violence leaves behind an impactful message. This is quite possibly my favourite Hozier album because he captures the concept of Dante’s Inferno so well. My favourite song off of this album is Who We Are because of its detailed lyricism and incredible vocals.
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