The cult of “New Zion” isn’t important, but the way we think of our past selves as other people certainly is.

Track: “New Zion”
Album: Heretic Pride (2008)

First things first, Heretic Pride is a unique album to talk about because it’s illustrated. John Darnielle wrote descriptions of each song and asked the artist Jeffrey Lewis to illustrate them. It’s one of the most fascinating pieces of Mountain Goats art that exists. The art is spectacular and it’s possibly the most complete discussion of an album in the band’s history.

The source text, then, says “New Zion” is about a cult that doesn’t exist, but it’s also about John Darnielle’s fascination with the way something can consume you the moment you become aware of it. He describes “cultmania” in the illustration and laments that the world has fewer “bizarre screeds” now. The character in “New Zion” has lost their faith but not their people. They remember the flash or the importance of religion and remembers how it all started “like the memory of a movie.” Those days are gone.

As much as the song is about their present in the cult, it’s about the past that they can’t quite summon up. It’s a literal cult, but it’s also the feeling of being fully reborn as a new person with no concept of the old you. As the protagonist says they “dreamed a dream of where I come from” you can imagine the difficulty of recalling a past that they’re supposed to be beyond. The specifics of the cult aren’t important — the song mentions ravens and robes, so you get a general sense — but the general nature of transition is. As with so many Goats songs, “New Zion” talks about how transition is painful whether it’s voluntary or not. They’re waiting for someone to come save them physically, but they’re concerned that it’s too late to save everything else.