Pompeii AM Gotterdammerung Explained

Havin' uh, recently came back from uh, Cologne, Germany, uhm
We realized how much uh, part of this melody resembles the German national anthem
Now, I think we knew that uh, there were some uh, vague, uhm
I think there is a quite a few melodies that can remind you of it
It's just one of those kinda, kinds of major familiarities, right, right, uhm

Our manager, uhm, Scott Booker uhm, took German history uhm, in high school
And actually went to Cologne, Germany when he was about sixteen
And when we played the track for him
He immidiately thought, "Oh, there's something about this that reminded me of that"
And then like I said I've recently gone to Germany everybody there was like
"Oh, so you uh, you like Germans, the German and Austrian composers?"
Uhm, and the reason they say that is because part of title uhm, has this word Gotterdammerung
Which I'm-I'm not sure if it's actually a word or if it's a word that Wagner made up for his opera
But anyway I think it's, it's come to-

Yeah, Michael isn't literally translated as, "The twilight of the gods? Is that what it is, literally?
Yes, yes, literally, I think it's a part of the whole Norse, Odin and Thor and all that stuff
I think there's a real... Based in mythology
But this idea of it being connected to-to-to the composer Wagner and his sot of, sense of drama and
If there's anything in music that doesn't have subtlety to it
Wouldn't you think it would be Wagner?
If you say someone is Wagnerias, it sorta be like they're big
I don't know if you'd wanna hang out with him now

And so it combines a sort of a, you could almost feel the fire and the death and destruction within the song
But also I think it has real sort of stern beautifulness in that flute melody
The stern beautifulness?
Well, there's something, there's something, sort of fragile, sort of fragile uh, fragile yet strong at the same time
And maybe that is this that Germannishness going on in there, yeah

I think, I think probably the source of inspiration was uhm
There's a band called Lake Trout that we befriended with, we befriended and we played a festival with them
And they have a guy named Matt, that plays, he plays rhodes piano
But he also plays this creepy flute, like real, an acoustic flute
It seemed like it's ran through reverb or delay or something
It's a real haunting kinda sound, it gets
I remember getting home after seeing them and thinking that would be really cool to do something like that
So, I'd give out bit a shout to those guys