For a couple of thousand years he’s been the most convenient defendant in history. Every war, every cruelty, every “something came over me” — file it under the Devil and go to lunch. Devil’s Alibi is his side of the story, and his defence is almost insulting in how simple it is: he never had to do anything. “I never turned a single key / I only stayed to watch you play.”
The pre-chorus is the philosophy I actually live by, under the corset and the jokes: life is the only feast you’ll get, and death is the fasting after. If this is the one life there is, then what you do with it is yours — nobody below to blame, nobody above to clean up after you. That’s all my Satanism has ever been: responsibility with no outsourcing. And because I couldn’t leave him without a sense of humour, he’s also a snob: “I’ve read your work — it’s derivative.” We haven’t invented a new cruelty in centuries. We just keep reissuing the old ones with a blessing on the cover.
Then the bridge, where I stop joking. “None of them ever prayed before they aimed.” It isn’t the violence he can’t match, it’s the prayer before it — the certainty that God signed off. Listen for the small change in the last chorus: “I never had to lift a finger” becomes “I don’t need to lift a finger anymore.” The student has outgrown the teacher.