Why is "On Most Surfaces" titled the way that it is given that only one surface appears in the song itself?

Question

Loosely related: Are there two separate narrators in "On Most Surfaces" by The Gathering?

The song On Most Surfaces by The Gathering (on their Nighttime Birds album) has the following lyrics:

The frost hits me in the eye and wakes me
These are blurry winters and I cannot see

I walk into the white light of the snow
When the sun comes
I break it with my shadow
Which tells me where I go

The frost hits me in the eye and wakes me

I am the snow falling down on you
I tear up your face with my frost
And make you run to somewhere warm
When I come I see you get away
I burst out about your emptiness

This only appears to describe a single "surface" (evidently a snow-covered landscape). That being the case, why is this titled "On Most Surfaces"? What's the significance of the title?

Answer 1

Let me preface this by saying I have no knowledge of the song or its writers/performers beyond the information in the question.

You say

this only appears to describe a single "surface" (evidently a snow-covered landscape)

Firstly, a landscape is made up of any number of surfaces, lawns, fields the tops of walls, roads, paths, the roofs of houses, the ledges of a windowsill, the boughs of a tree, the tips of the pales of a fence....

But I think you may be off-beam on assuming that the 'most surfaces' relates to snow, snow generally lands on the upper or windward surface of things, whereas frost, which is mentioned more often in the lyric, forms on tops, sides, undersides and edges, in fact... on most surfaces.

At a guess, perhaps the lyric was inspired by a report on weather conditions, in my part of the world the phrasing is usually something like 'widespread frost except in sheltered glens', but perhaps elsewhere there are warnings of frost on most surfaces.