Wish You Were Myr
Track 1. Shine On You Chrome Mox (Parts 1-6.3)
The song explores the depths of the band’s experiences with their once succesful mana source and how in the end it ended up exiled.
Track 2. Welcome to the Cog Machine
The song explores the band’s negativity towards the combo engine and the whole of Mirrodin. The song centers around an aspiring Mirran who is getting paid by a power mad golem. The voice predicts all the boy’s seemingly rebellious ideas (“You bought a cog, and held them off with a fog”). The boy’s illusions of personal identity are further crushed with lines such as, “What did you build, it’s alright we told you what to build”. The lyrics also allude to the band’s disillusionment with Mirrodin as a cog-making machine rather than a forum of artistic expression. On the original LP, the song segued from the first 5 parts of the suite “Shine On You Chrome Mox” and closed the first side. On the CD pressings, especially the 1997 and 2000 remastered issues, it segues (although very faintly) to “Have a Spellbomb”. This segueing is a few seconds longer on the Dominarian version than the Mirran version.
Track 3. Have a Spellbomb
The song’s music and lyrics were written by Roger Waters in critique of hypocrisy and greed within the combo engine. It is sung, presumably, in the voice of a stereotypical artificer, shown to be quite incompetent and unaware (the artificer doesn’t understand where the mana comes from, assuming it’s just a mechincal process). The music itself is more straightforwardly rock-oriented than the rest of the album, beginning with a churning riff played on electric guitar and bass. The track is filled out with additional guitar, electric piano and synthesizer parts to create a rock texture.
Track 4. Wish You Were Myr
The song is a regretful look at the world and how the simpler things, the small mirran entities known as Myr, live a life that is many ways admiralable but at the same time so small and hard to aspire to. This conflict forms the structure of the song.
Track 5. Shine On You Chrome Mox (Parts 6.4-9.54)
The song slowly builds to it’s climax as the mana source eventually returns itself to hand and imprints itself into nothingness.