Trivium bass guitarist Paolo Gregoletto explained the song’s meaning during a track-by-track interview with TeamRock:

“I kept seeing this word in a lot of news articles I was reading: revanchist. And describing religion and different things, describing something like a ‘real revanchist’. And it was like, what is this word? When I looked it up, the first thing that came up was a literal definition of revanchist being about the French taking back some sort of reclaimed territory they had fought or something. I guess maybe it’s used interchangeably with someone being described as a reactionary.

I don’t know if I was trying to do it from the viewpoint of a person, or just the idea of the word of a revanchist – reclaiming and promising this past glory, this thing that you can reclaim, and only this person can bring it to you, and through them you’ll find this promised land and this past that I’m selling you or promising. It feels like in history, any time there’s been these points, there’s always people that are looking back to this imagined past, like it was much better at this one point. I feel like it’s very insidious; it’s a dark way to think."