1. |
Beast of Empire
02:02
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Gods and Popes and Queens and Kings
They know they’ve got us listening
The only way for us to live at all
Is to slave and toil for their reckoning
People laugh and people cry
People dream and fuck and sigh
After work and church and war
This is what’s left, a feeble life
And we still comply - Why don’t we ask why
They give us shit - All scams, all lies
But we still comply - We fall in line
We fear them so - We don’t want to die
The bosses are fat and lazy
The owners are all but crazy
“The conquered people are still fighting back,
Now isn’t that amazing?”
You colonized our bodies and minds
You’ve eaten our hearts and shat them out
Fragments of love we struggle to find
to piece together what we’re really about
As the church bells ring
Are you listening?
Do you know what they mean?
It’s time to do something.
A blanket of control over the land, of
surveillance screens, and church bell towers,
Dominates common people everywhere,
It is the conquest of our waking hours
At the glance of the priest, at the policeman’s arms,
we worry and wonder, we stoop and cower
The time and space of our minds and hearts
Is occupied with threats of power
The beast of empire wants to eat us up,
digest our worth, then shit us out
But we struggle inside, rip a new asshole
in its colon wall with a savage shout
It is colonizing you and me, but
we’ll break free and we’ll get out
We’ll break free and we’ll get out
we’ll break free and we’ll get out
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2. |
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Fumbling on the floor, on all fours, over all the land
Searching for who we were when we could understand
The truth of our connection to each other and to everything
Before we ever heard you making demands and commands
So you think you own this land?
You don’t see it… you don’t hear it…
You don’t know it...You can’t feel it…
Your greed has eaten your heart
The leaders’ greed has eaten up their hearts
We say, “We’ll find your heart too, sir, we can still fix it,
Oh look! That’s a piece of it over in the corner”
“No come on, back to work, we’ve got to get on with it.”
So you think you own this land?
You don’t see it… you don’t hear it…
You don’t know it...You can’t feel it…
Your greed has eaten your heart
“Really, let us help you boss, things have really gone amiss....”
“No, no, there’s the bell, we’ve got to keep producing this…”
“That really doesn’t matter, believe us please before it’s too late,
We know something you don’t, we’re putting together the pieces”
So you think you own this land?
You don’t see it… you don’t hear it…
You don’t know it...You can’t feel it…
Your greed has eaten your heart
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3. |
Pox Americana
02:30
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So, this may shake the very foundation
Of our ailing society, but forgive us… I mean...
An entire continent of land and cultures swapped
for a few smallpox infested blankets, that wasn’t really a fair deal, was it?
People already lived in this so-called “new world”
So why do we still consider it a discovery? It wasn't.
These nation-building land grabs paved the way for our private property obsessions.
This hasn’t been good either for us or the Earth at all
Our ways across divisions are fraught
With guilt and anger, the hidden costs.
How do we escape this cunning trap?
All of us caught in the fisherman’s net.
Greedy bosses think they’ve got us
where they want us: stewing in their guts
But we’re circling ‘round your empty churches
Walking against the sun
Let’s be clear about this: those preposterous popes never had the moral authority
To give Indigenous Peoples’ lands to Christian explorers
At the bidding of gold-lusting, empire-building monarchs
and the raping, murdering soldiers and waves of settlers who followed in their wake
Our ways across divisions are fraught
With guilt and anger, the hidden costs.
How do we escape this cunning trap?
All of us caught in the fisherman’s net
Greedy bosses think they’ve got us
where they want us: stewing in their guts
But we’re circling ‘round your empty churches
Walking against the sun
Let me propose a parting toast to the death of colonization
With the essence of the forest, this is our magic potion...
Here we go a-trespassing on your cherished private property
Of your feeble regulations we’ll make a proper mockery
As we circle ‘round your empty churches and imposter states
Tra-la-la, around we go, widdershins, the fairy land awaits
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4. |
Violence Breeds Peace
03:35
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We know the last day will come
That we’ll wake up to an angry sun
Get the angry news and be finally done
With all our weary desperate runs
And all our futile forgettable fun
The lies we’ve been told since we came undone
And escaped from the womb, from our first prison
To find ourselves on either one
Or another end of another gun
In the flesh, by proxy, or both at once
Violence is what we live and breathe
It’s why we want so badly to kill or be killed
A final escape from our boredom
the future stolen from us against our will
Looking at us looking at ourselves
clutching to the lifeline of the ego in me
The shadow that this body casts
The delirious farce in the mirror I see
Go to bed and dream some more
Go to bed and dream some more
Go to bed and dream some more
A life of denial or all out war
Fragile creatures passing through days
Resources concentrated in blood and bone
A sequence of parental traits
We battle as long as we feel we know
How to keep the fight alive
The resistance to death, the will to survive
This keeps us twitching along
A mumbling humdrum violent throng
Go to bed and dream some more
Go to bed and dream some more
Go to bed and dream some more
A life of denial or all out war
A sick world running on empty
You know we’re all scared of absolutely everything
Every active person is an enemy
Of a comfortable middle-class complacency
All we have is shame and fear
For all we believe, all we see and hear
It’s not for us they built these gardens
It’s not for us they protect this land
It’s not for us they built these gardens
It’s not for us they protect this land
It’s not for us they built these gardens
It’s not for us they protect this land
It’s not for us they built these gardens
It’s not for us they protect this land
It’s not for us they built these gardens
It’s not for us they protect this land
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5. |
Uncivilization
02:00
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The choices left us are not much more
Than a life of denial or all-out war
If we get a choice at all, some do and some don’t
If it’s a choice we recognize, some will and some won’t
The kings in their castles, or the slaves in their caves
Who do we stand with when we go or we stay
In the choices we make and the chances we take
The relations we maintain, and those that we break
Uncivilization is the future of civilization
The uncivilized will uncivilize the civilized nations, let me tell ya:
Uncivilization is the future of civilization
The uncivilized will uncivilize the civilized nations
The ones we never reach for, and the ones that run away
Those we want to kill and those we try to save
All of these decisions are made in moments fraught
With misinformation got from lies we were taught
A thousand enemies surrounding our minds
Fencing our thoughts in, locking up any kind
Of connection that could liberate the possibility
Of escape from the torture of this savage civility
Uncivilization is the future of civilization
The uncivilized will uncivilize the civilized nations, come on now...
Uncivilization is the future of civilization
The uncivilized will uncivilize the civilized nations
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Pink Butchers
CT/NY-based peace punk featuring former members of grindpunk legends THE CANCER KIDS and "chaos Oi!" pioneers STATE ASSISTED SUICIDE
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