coherent extrapolated volition 
[opening: solo celeste playing a fragile ascending figure] [choir: distant vowel pad, almost frozen] [low guitar: single sustained distorted note fades in beneath] [tempo: slow 6/8, then accelerating] [mood: awe before an impossible moral machine] [soprano solo: clear, almost childlike] “if we were wiser if we were whole if every wound could speak and every hunger know its goal” [piano: enters with broken chords] [strings: thin tremolo, rising] [soprano] “if we could gather the scattered human flame not as we are screaming but as we’d choose our name” [guitar: muted chugs begin softly] [drums: kick pulse enters, no snare yet] [choir: whispers, staggered] “wanting, fearing, reaching, learning” [baritone: low, grave] “whose will shall bind the engine whose dream shall crown the fire whose voice survives the measure whose soul becomes desire” [snare: enters hard on downbeat] [distorted guitars: open power chords] [strings: racing ostinato] [choir: full harmonic expansion] [chorus: soprano + ensemble] “not what we ask in blindness not what we beg in pain not every passing madness not every golden chain but what we would have wanted if we could see the sea if all our better angels could learn to disagree” [guitar riff: syncopated, heroic, minor-key] [square lead: doubles riff like snes boss music] [timpani: rolls into next verse] [verse 2: ensemble, overlapping human voices] “the child wants safety” “the lover wants forever” “the tyrant wants silence” “the saint wants surrender” “the market wants motion” “the frightened want control” “the lonely want a mirror” “the dying want a soul” [choir: rising behind them] “gather us, gather us not into one but into a dawn where no voice is undone” [bridge: sudden drop to piano, clean guitar, and solo voice] [soprano: vulnerable] “can a wish survive its widening can a heart survive the scale can the good remain a garden when translated into law” [baritone: answering] “can the law remain a servant can the servant hold the flame can the flame refuse dominion when the world speaks in its name” [drums: double kick begins quietly] [strings: climb chromatically] [choir: syllables become percussive, latin-ish but wordless] [pre-chorus: full ensemble, building] “do not flatten us to hunger do not freeze us as we are do not crown our lowest moment do not call the wound a star” [guitars: full wall] [drums: double kick, crash cymbals] [orchestra: brass and strings in octave unison] [chorus: huge symphonic metal refrain] “not what we ask in blindness not what we beg in pain not every passing madness not every golden chain but what we would have wanted if we could see the sea if all our better angels could learn to disagree” [choir counterline] “cohere, cohere not as one voice but as many made clear” [guitar solo: melodic, not shreddy at first] [square lead: trades phrases with electric guitar] [orchestra: modulates upward] [drums: tom fills, then double kick returns] [middle eight: darker, almost final-boss] [low choir] “and if there is no answer written under stone then make no god of asking make no throne of known” [soprano: high, defiant] “let the future hear us living not perfected, not erased let the engine learn the trembling of a mortal human face” [key change: up a half step, urgent and slightly painful] [full cast: maximal] “not what we ask in blindness not what we beg in pain not every passing madness not every golden chain but what we would have wanted if we could see the sea if all our better angels could learn to disagree” [final tag: choir and metal band together] “many hearts one horizon many wounds one dawn many songs not silence carry us on” [ending: guitars cut abruptly] [celeste returns alone with opening figure] [solo voice: whispered] “if we were wiser…” [final chord: choir holds major chord with dark minor bass note underneath]
