"Jezebel", "the slow, roiling eight-minute opener [...] coiled to bust loose at any moment", deals with topics such as "the death of journalist Daniel Pearl in the Middle East, nuclear testing in the Australian homeland, and a massacre that is infamous in Aussie history". The track has been described as a "roller coaster" and as "one part love song to nine parts apocalyptic nightmare" featuring allegorical lyrics. According to Greil Marcus, the "delirious" song "seems to suck all the chaos and horror of the present moment into a single human being, who struggles to contain that world inside himself". He described the choruses as "unnerving" and found the band's performance on the song overall as a "shocker".