Katatonia - Lacquer (Lyrical Breakdown)

 I think the premise of this song is on the more clearer side of Jonas' lyricism, but... I still want to write this post. I love this song.

I think the song is about a relationship ending, and here's why:

My voice channeling

A circuit's end

The house we lived in

Stricken with blight

Finding ways to kill the pain

Let the river run wild

Dreams shattering

Aerial sound

 A circuit's end, like the end of the relationship.

Blight is "anything that impedes growth or development or spoils any other aspect of life", says the dictionary I use, Sanakirja.org.
They lived together and now no one lives in the house, because the "blight" killed all life off the house.

He had dreams about their life together, but those dreams are shattered now. The dreams break so hard you can practically hear them breaking.

I think the "finding ways to kill the pain / let the river run wild" refers to him crying over the relationship that ended, but I could be wrong, it could be something else...

Scrape the lacquer

Can't you see it's all tarnished

 The house, a metaphor for their relationship, has been slowly wearing down anyway, and they didn't take care of it properly. The lacquer is all tarnished, the structure is no longer protected by that protective layer and the house might start rotting. Now that the relationship is ending, they scrape away the lacquer and finally see how bad the condition of the house/relationship is under the surface.

Tried the poise

To radiate

Tried my words

To illustrate

Finding ways to end the pain

I let the river run wild

Dreams shattering

Fixing to die

He tried to be the bigger person, to talk about things with his partner, but it didn't work out. He couldn't find a way to end the pain, him and possibly the other person as well got hurt anyway. The dreams shattered, even when he was trying his best, dying to fix things. 

The levee breaking

I can't live to fight once more

The road to the grave is straight as an arrow

I'm just staying around to sing your song

Baby

The levee = " The steep bank of a river, or border of an irrigated field."
Keeping up with the water scheme, the river is behind a levee, and now the levee is breaking, releasing the water. The "waterworks" aka the tears, the water that gets under the tarnished lacquer and rots the house, the water that drowns them under itself and sweeps them away from the house and each other.

He's still reminiscing over the relationship, even though it did not work out. He can't live to fight for the relationship anymore. The pain of the heartbreak is killing him, he wants to die. But he's staying alive long enough to write and sing this song.

I wonder what the arrow symbolizes, though... He could have used any object that's straight and he chose an arrow... My first thoughts are the Cupid, heartbreak, and an arrow swishing through the air... Cupid shot his arrow, making him fall in love with this woman. In all the cartoons and such, he does this by shooting an arrow through the person's heart. But if that were to happen for real, the heart would break. Which is what he's actually experiencing here. And the arrow swishes through his heart and into a grave, taking him with it. That's the mental image I get.
But who's aiming the arrow to the grave? The river?

My voice travelling

Soaring bird above your head

The house we lived in

Ridden with disease

Jonas and his bird metaphors :D He never gets tired of them.
I'm going with the most common interpretation fans have for them in this case and assume the bird is a crow and it symbolizes death.

Now that the song has been sung, he has no reason to stay alive anymore, and he kills himself. He flies off to heaven, looking down at the flooded house and the woman he loved so dearly.

Another, although similar, interpretation on the song lyrics could be that the blight/disease is literal and one or both of them die. In which case the house could maybe symbolize his or her body?
Although, he does call it a house that they both lived in, so maybe the house is literally a house and not a human body.
Then the pain he/she is trying to kill/end is literal, caused by the disease, the lacquer could be the skin or the immune system that's broken and letting in diseases, he's trying to stay strong (the poise to radiate, the words to illustrate) against his illness or to support her through her illness, then either he gives up or she dies ("I can't live to fight once more / the road to the grave is straight as an arrow / I'm just staying around to sing your song / baby").