Regarding the title "Floodland", Eldritch realised that, after writing all the songs for the album, the theme of water came up multiple times throughout. He attributed the theme's recurrence to the amount of water within Hamburg, where he was writing these songs. Michael Bonner of "Uncut" viewed Eldritch as casting himself in a role where he is a "jaded observer, watching cynically as he and the world slouch towards Armageddon," adding that the songs are bonded together by "images of the apocalypse that straddle the gap between the personal and the political."