I’m sure it would please Nicolay Løvvold no end to know that the sort of ‘educational research’ he did into the subject matter of this song in his youth would not be allowed today in the UK because of the Online Safety Act, which came into force yesterday. And that would have killed another great rocker from him.
The story starts in The Garden of Eden with the premise, “take everything holy, wholesome, good and decent, and toy with it by flipping it on its head”, the song then evolving into ‘Snake in Paradise’ and then sitting around for years and then becoming ‘South of Eden’.
Could that be mouth to south of Eden or is that too brazen even for Nicolay? Worth risking an apple for, what do you think Adam?
His take is that while there are good things about religion, there are a lot of reprehensible things that have been done in the name of the Lord. So he decided to make a song that highlighted the complete opposite.
And lines like:
“BDSM and the moan/All the toys to make you groan
Sybarites down to the bone/We all aim to have good fun
The pious doctrines of good faith/Never once did they appeal
I’d rather be a shameful sinner/And feel the pleasures of what’s real”
don’t leave much to the imagination, do they?
I feel they sort of belong in Kubrick’s last film, ‘Eyes Wide Shut’, in the orgy scene.
It’s a metal/rock concoction again, into which this time he has added a sliver of trance in the chorus.
Whichever way you look at it, it’s an unrelenting pile driver of a song which is right now being played by special request to the dear departed Ozzy somewhere up in that great recording studio in the sky.
Find him on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nicolaylovvold
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nicolaylovvold/
