Antichrist Superstar - Concept

Concept

The three part storyline begins with the Crowleyean statement "When you are suffering, know that I have betrayed you". The backdrop is set to a landscape of 'victims' (the 'weak'; Nietzsche's 'slaves' in his Master-Slave morality) oppressed by "The Beautiful People" (the 'masters'), a kratocratic plutarchy whose power is, in a double entendre with phallic and religious connotation, "relative to the size of their steeple" and whose authority is Social Darwinism taken to the extreme—they are "justified" by the existence of the weak. Among that populace is an abused and insignificant wretch, the protagonist, called "The Worm", who develops aspirations to become one of the elite. However, he is rejected in as simple terms and, after wallowing for a time in sorrow and self-pity, concludes to exercise his will to power and seize authority with his own hands. The record proceeds to detail his rise to prominence presented in the metaphor of a worm to angel metamorphosis.

"I am so all-American, I'd sell you suicide."

In his rise to power, he fashions himself into a charismatic demagogue and hierophant, the "Little Horn", to proselytize self-determination and self-realization and to usher in a new metanarrative in place of the hitherto reigning ideal. In spite of this, the Little Horn is self-punishing, with self-doubt still lingering from his dejected former self. The people respond to his revolution with adoration and blandishment. Thus, though he is successful in his aims, he is soon disillusioned and begins to despise those very adoring and sycophantic disciples when he comes to the realization that they are not interested in being saved and quite content to remain weak, imitative and oppressed. It's under this intolerable failure that he begins the final stage of his development. Dying in the manner of a caterpillar, the Little Horn rebirths himself under intense pressure, emptying his cocoon of the self-loathing, guilt and abuse that marked the Worm in harrowing fashion, to "get his wings".

Having transcended his lesser nature, all he has left is his bitterness and disenchantment. He has shed his ability to feel empathy for anyone and repurposes his newfound stature and confidence in becoming the penultimate culture war iconoclast, a Nietzschean Übermensch calling himself the "Antichrist Superstar" (or alternatively, "The Disintegrator"), having finally concluded that what the people truly want is what he sought to dispose of. They no longer deserve salvation. In this manner he adopts as his personal insignia the epithet "When you are suffering, know that I have betrayed you" as he lets his scathing vitriol spiral into nihilism and misanthropy, railing against and destroying everything. Spent and disconsolate, the "Minute of Decay" intimates that "I'm on my way down now, I'd like to take you with me. I'm on my way down" as he embarks on a final scorched earth campaign of apocalypse, delivering the condemnation, "your world is an ashtray, we burn and coil like cigarettes it's the nature of the leeches, the virgins cheated, you've only spent a second of your life" and contracting the world like the pupil of an eye into the size of a bullethole, "one shot and your world gets smaller". He begins to destroy everyone and everything including himself and his revolution, declaring, "pray your life was just a dream, the cut that never heals the world in my hands, there's no one left to hear you scream no one left for you". As he abrogates everything into nothingness, he begins to understand that "when all of your wishes are granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed".