(Antichrist Television Blues)

Built around Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" as both musical template and point of departure, this sprawling track is one of the most ambitious and uncomfortable pieces in the band's discography. The driving rock and roll rhythm — that classic American forward motion — is deployed here in service of something deeply critical: a portrait of a father who sacrifices his daughter's youth to his own ambition for religious fame, framing it as God's will. The guitar work is genuinely propulsive, and the song moves fast, almost recklessly, which is part of the point — the velocity of conviction leaving no room for doubt or conscience. Win Butler's vocal performance is among his most committed, inhabiting a character rather than commenting on one, which makes the song genuinely unsettling. The "antichrist" of the title is not an external villain but a mirror held up to American evangelical culture's hunger for spectacle and its willingness to use children as instruments. Musically the song earns its nearly six-minute runtime by never repeating itself emotionally — it begins with drive and ends somewhere much darker, the narrative having moved from ambition to something that can't be taken back. This belongs to a lineage of American storytelling that uses rock's own mythology against itself, finding the rot inside the foundation. It demands full attention and rewards it with something that lingers uncomfortably after the last chord fades.