Story Behind The Song

Featured in the July/August issue of England's Zero Tolerance Magazine.

Song Description

The song begins with 8 measures of half-time 4/4, then launches into a blast beat pattern of 3 measures in 7 and a measure in 10. This 7/7/7/10 pattern repeats 4 times, then the band enters what we call a "mess." Much as Paul Hindemith would sometimes write without key signatures, the band has no established time signature for this segment, since time signature assignments would be haphazard, arbitrary, and constantly in flux. Following the mess, the band plays a half-time figure that escalates to a blast beat pattern. This builds up to a section in which the lead guitar plays scalar runs against chorded accents every 4 measures for a total of 48 measures. The drums, meanwhile, play a "mirror" pattern, in which the drummer plays a rhythmic figure 24 measures long, then plays it backwards for 24 measures. The vocals anchor the rhythm here by maintaining a predictable 8th note pattern throughout. The song then turns to a 12/8 half-time figure with swung vocals which leads into the solo. Halfway through the solo, the band shifts their accompaniment to a double-time 4/4 thrash backing, then cuts out for the last few notes of the solo. The remainder of the song follows the above-described "mess" format, with numerous starts and stops.

Lyrics

Faces tan and bleach,
Changing each to each,
Falling under flags,
Wrapped around body bags.
Dividing up the dead
For ease of burial.
These children fail and fall,
Called "noble," in

Repose they know not why they die,
Their features flaccid, clearly
Fearful of their destiny
Defending "god" and "country."

Semantic black holes fill them,
Chugging blood to let the brain,
The mind now free to wander,
Free to kill and die in vain.

Illness fills such holy minds,
Raked with lines in sifting sand,
Taught that sand is permanent,
Taught those lines were always there.

Ignorant of history,
Borders changing constantly,
Empty nationality
Forms their whole identity.

My uncle prepares for me
A room in the house of my father.

He digs a grave for,
Digs a grave for me.

I have been told,
Since I was able to speak,
That I am free in this place,
Through nationality.
That I may live as I will,
And I may act as I please,
And that the world envies me,
For my exemption from their constant state of

Poverty--
And that they cannot think
Properly--
That these poor souls have been
Denied a god--
Without salvation they will
Burn in Hell--
Without democracy will
Rot on earth--
But these things only as we
Choose to define them--
Denied capacity for
Abstract thought--
Defined from outside based on
What we're not--
Negative--
Othering--
Propaganda--
Posturing--

A paradox--
A thing that seems should not exist but
Continues to anyway,
Despite the wisdom
Dispelled by liberal optimists who
Want to explain it away.
This tribalism,
Counter to our evolution,
It seems we cannot escape,
Despite the facts,
The overwhelming evidence that
We have been wired this way.
A simple means
Of overcoming dated instincts
Is all we seem to need,
Progressive logic,
A mode of thought beyond this notion
Made in a broader scheme.

[Guitar solo.]

Do you foster destitution
When you foster evolution?
Words dividing different factions fall
And all survive.

War forever kills
Those without the will
To retract their creed
Of identity.