"The Willing Well IV: The Final Cut"

Album Art by Christopher Shy.

### Appears on

*Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV - Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness*

### Mastering

Brian Gardner

**"The Willing Well IV: The Final Cut"** is a song by the American rock band Coheed and Cambria. It is the fourteen song on their 2005 album *Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV - Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness*. This is the fourth and final part of The Willing Well song suite.

## Lyrics

**[Verse]**

In the final curtain call, you left me here with

The coldest of feelings, weight, kind, depression

Blessing the floors with the places you've stepped in

But will they ever measure up to the way you left me?

Here, on the roadside, the bloodiest cadaver

Marked in your words: I'm the joke, I'm the bastard

Here, wait, so I guess that you knew, that you're...

A selfish little whore, I'm the selfish little whore

If I had my way, I'd crush your face in the door

**[Chorus]**

This is no beginning... yeah, yeah

This is the final cut, open up

This is no beginning... yeah, yeah

This is the final cut, I'm in love

## Music Video

A somewhat official music video was released for this song sometime in 2006. It was directed by Claudio Sanchez himself who also seems to play Ryder in it. Interestingly enough, Chondra Echert, his now wife, plays Erica Court. It seems to have been a Halloween promo for their upcoming Live DVD *The Last Supper: Live at Hammerstein Ballroom*. It is listed as "unofficial" as the band has never reuploaded this to their official page; perhaps due its low quality, perhaps due to the content.

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## Story Context

We start with the verse, in which Ryder speaks to Erica. "Right when I needed you most, you walked away." This is just after he's been arguing with Ten Speed in front of Erica, and Erica, determining that he isn't on his meds and needs intervention, declares that she's leaving to get him help. Of course, he doesn't interpret these actions as ones of love, but ones of betrayal. This also makes him feel depressed and empty; a sense of loss. He worshiped the ground she walk on, and yet she does this? He feels like roadkill, like dirt, like a brunt of a joke. This leads him to feel anger. How could she mock him and do this? Didn't Ten Speed show him she even cheated on him? He's so angry he could kill her...

If this isn't the beginning, than it is the end. Of course, the final cut could very well refer to Ambellina's death, but in the context of the rest of the lyrics, it's probably the big reveal: Ryder has cut Erica's throat in The Real and shortly after going to his house door, is also killed by police who have been called to the home, probably by concerned neighbors that heard Erica's cries for help. This raises the question: what was really real?

As the song fades out, we again hear the laughter of a child who is meant to be Chase, presumably as Ryder's existence begins to fade, he thinks back on his pride and joy: his story. And Chase is the bridge to that story. In the comic, we see several times a picture of a child who looks remarkably similar to Chase floating around Ryder in his madness.

## Trivia

* Danny Louis provided the Keyboards.
* **Janiris Sanchez** who made the child vocals on this track is Sanchez's niece.
* According to Sanchez, the simple explanation of this song is: "The Writer gets brought to this guillotine with wings, and at the guillotine is his love, Erica Court. And she says to him, in the voice of Ten Speed, ‘This is no beginning / This is the final cut.’ And the blade comes down on the character, but he doesn’t die - he realizes what he has to do: he has to tell the Character what he is. It’s out of order."
	+ This is a description of a very specific moment in the comic. Ten Speed has over-powered Ryder and his eyes go black and seems to become a puppet. A portal to The Fiction is unlocked and through it, Ten Speed guides Ryder's seemingly life-less body with the help of skeletal souls to the aforementioned guillotine, but just as the blade comes down, the scene shifts and Ryder is now in The Fiction, his eyes still full of black. Of course, he does seek out Claudio to convey his desire and it is Ryder who says "This is no beginning / This is the final cut" to Claudio, so some details may have changed over the years.
* The music video features a photo of Echert with another guy to depict the scene in the comic when Ryder believes Erica is cheating on him. This photo is of Echert and her brother, Kris.

## References

1. ↑ Coheed and Cambria. Booklet. *Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV - Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness*, Equal Vision Records, 2005.
2. ↑ https://genius.com/Coheed-and-cambria-the-willing-well-iv-the-final-cut-lyrics
3. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CySSSkF6XVk
4. ↑ https://www.popmatters.com/193759-keeping-the-acclaim-the-legacy-of-coheed-and-cambrias-good-apollo-im-2495525711.html
5. ↑ https://www.clevescene.com/scene-and-heard/archives/2007/10/24/coheed-decoded-coheed-and-cambria-frontman-recaps-his-sci-fi-epic