Anger Impulse
Hate Dept. Lyrics

The lyrics to Hate Dept.'s song, Anger Impulse, delve into the complexity of human emotions, particularly anger and pain. The first lines, "With a twinkle in my eye, I believed that we are all the same," express a sense of naive idealism that is quickly shattered by the harsh realities of life. The mother's attempt to teach her son to "swallow all of the pain" indicates that pain and suffering are inevitable, but that we must learn to cope with it. The line, "If we go down there, you're not coming back," suggests that there is a danger that we may lose ourselves in our anger and never return from it.

The chorus, "I've tried to hide, tried to fight the anger impulse," reveals the internal struggle that the singer is facing between his desire to conceal his anger and his impulse to let it out. The following lines, "From some of you who held me down to some who just stepped on my fingers, some of them just walked away and some went to get their big brothers," illustrate the ways in which people can cause harm, whether intentionally or unintentionally, and how others may react to this harm in different ways. The lines, "I feel my age and my thoughts have changed and now I know we're nothing alike, I've choked back the hurt for so many years that my heart is about to break," encapsulate the singer's realization that people are not all the same, and that their actions can have an impact on others. The pain he has suppressed for years is now threatening to overwhelm him.