Okay looking into the lyrics and what people are saying and references of MCR's song it makes me like it so much more
So the band started because Gerard was there when the twin towers fell. He didn't see the planes but witnessed everything else and that's what made him say fuck it, I want to live my life to the fullest. So he started the band.
In the song there is a reference to a line he said in an interview where he watched the towers fell as he walked down the road.
But as the band grew bigger everyone's opinions of them grew louder and it became hard on them to figure out where they wanted to go. During their last album in 2010 he fell back into a severely depressive state and on tour he realized he was becoming self destructive. That mixed with other issues they decided to disband. The song talks a lot about deterioration and growing weak. Near the end it says it's "And as we stumble through your last crusade
When you welcome your extinction in the morning rays
And as the swarming calls, we lay in the foundations"
The band knew in late 2010 their time was coming to an end and they began to feel at peace with it. And started preparing to disband.
But at the very end of the song it goes "Yes it comforts me much more to lay in the foundation of decay" because obviously it's easier to not get back together and let things be but the very last line is him screaming "get up, coward"
Basically signaling a new start. And the whole song is about them rebuilding from what once was and I really like that and like how indirect the lyrics are taking from small little comments made here and there about the band. Referencing certain moments they went through or things they said.
one of my favorite hobbies is making myself cry by listening to the foundations of decay (mcr) and going "okay but this song with (current hyperfixation)"
Gonna rant about the mixing of TFOD for a second here because god damn it I fucking love what they did with this song and could talk about it for hours.
Obviously it's mixed to sound like the song itself is decaying, it's broken and jumbled, and there's a small bit of clarity in the "center", but what gets me thinking is how clear the final "To lay in the foundations of decay" is. Obviously, this song has it's more clearer moments whenever they want to put emphasis on something (think the end of each verse), but there's something special about this one. If you listen to this song with headphones, it sounds "split", like 50% of the song is on the "left" and the other 50% is on the "right", and the vocals are more in the "back" but the final statement of "To lay in the foundations of decay" is clear, and in the "front." There's just something about that being the specific lyric they chose to be front and center. Even the lyrics building up to it and afterwards sound distant, and jumbled. ("It comforts me much more" is towards the "front", yes, but it still is "split", while as "to lay in the foundations of decay" is more whole and unified.) You'd think the most clear part of it all should be "Get up coward" because that's sort of the whole cherry on top of the song that really sells the meaning which is a discussion for another time, but no, after the previously mentioned moment of clarity, it sounds like the song collapses, the process of decaying is complete and there are only ruins left.
sorry for the choppy screen recordings but this is the thing that keeps getting to me..."just sleep (WAKE UP!!)" -> "it comforts me much more to lay in the foundations of decay (GET! UP! COWARD!!)." two screamed outtros, both buried in the mix and barely discernable, both contradicting the much clearer vocals that precede them. so similar on the surface and yet tfod is so much less bleak than sleep. it's less desperation and more defiance, maybe.