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(skip to 2:55 if you wanna skip the intro lol)
I woke up swaddled in blue
On a raft made of concrete
Little devils, they were
Warranting peace for an ending
I dreamed the brine was a costume
That we could go out that evening
That I could face what the faceless say
That freedom never felt pending...
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By the fiery skyline I will
seek what kills me slowly and softly
By the light of this ghastly stare
I'll lie comatose, aged poorly, unstopping
I never got to feel the sun,
I wouldn't know what to miss if the ceiling caught me
Wet devastation tells me taste the wine
I got drunk on the thought of the sun collapsing
(I can't save myself from this)
What spells were cast by your heavenly eyes onto me?
(Stained, old Icarus)
Believe me, this isn't anything you haven't seen yet
(Blatant disregard)
What's the point in trying when trying just leads to this?
(Begging to fall apart)
Lovely and lonesome like a split tongue full of debris
(BABY, BABY, BABY! YOU'RE TALKING TO YOURSELF!
BABY, BABY, BABY! OPEN YOUR EYES! LOOK AT THE SUN!)
Garish looks from plastic faces
The alcove paints plain discontentment
Leaning into a uselessness,
cold shoulders sing songs of celebration
I never felt the caress of sleep,
I sat petrified, gross eyes gleamed vacant
Underneath the helm of defeat
I lay rotten and hungry in a summer's derangement
(What's the plague of breath within?)
Do my eyes play tricks or am I finally starting to get it?
(Baseless pilgrimage)
Catching fire, catching looks from the hungriest grimaces
(A strangers dream, I guess)
Oh my god, my skin, I can't feel my fucking skin!
(I fed myself to depth)
Nothing is nothing, right?
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3. |
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This existence is famine
These thoughts are spy planes overhead
This condition is exhausting
A dream of swan songs projected again
What yellow eyes come to greet me?
Like plastic hands breaking glass from within,
they smile mangled and argyle, ugly
as my limbs buckle under the wind
And like the birds circling, dreaming of skin loss,
a horde of plagues harbor me in a skeleton dance
They sing a song of only sickness and death:
"Don't you dream of forgetting that you ever had a chance?"
Coaxed out of my dreamless sleeping
Coaxed out of my wedding gown
I blink twice as a missing punchline
A leech only knows to bleed anyone around
My stomach burns with the thought of your leaving
My skin recoils at the shock of your hand
I was born to no current, a vast sea
I was dead before my tongue met the sand
This is the storm you know, this is the ship you've built
This is the loss, let it mold what the sickness killed
This is the afterthought. lovely and lacquered sleep
This is the void, let me drink with finality
Can we dance in your yard like the neighbors won't see?
Can we shed all of our skin in pretend halloween?
Can my ribs be a home, climes like ladders, amazed
at the loss of the breath, at the filter of face?
I'm not brave enough to lay down yet
with the rats and the mice and the neon lights,
orange and purple in a makeshift sunset
Tell me all about what the boys back home think
Tell me all about what your third eye saw last night
Tell me all about what the boys back home might think of me
Tell me all about it while I'm off alone getting high
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4. |
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A sure death paints the shoreline
An evolutionary failure commands
A bolstered ego persists
as a lecherous ghouls and a murderous hand
Does devastation breed industry?
Is culture goldened by death, by demand?
Is the blood in your skin worth the rubble,
the bread molded, blackened, and levied against?
The heads of tables are seated
The glasses filled to the brim with the wine
As sickness watches me dancing
Through dead blue-grey of emotionless eyes
An arm extension of a monstrous nation
A dream so fucking far out of your reach
Let us sing high our praise as the gods that we killed
were replaced with the same damned disease
And I don't want to wake up anymore
if my eyes won't believe what they see
A love letter penned, beautifully describing
the death of everything important to me
These fingers bleed unto nothingness
I watch the bone force it's way through the skin
With fervent tongue, I curse god and country,
a ruling class with a boot to my lips
And when the planet's forsaken,
the only home I have burst into flames,
when the oceans bone dry, traded in for a profit
will God smile on us the same?
An indifferent country's seething contagion
ripped a future straight out of our hands
As the bottle sits empty, the flesh licked from bone
the empty table's all that's left of the dance
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5. |
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Ripped from the skin, blistering and forgotten
Forced into lines, lemmings eager to make
When the breath in your chest is the weight of an anchor
to give thanks is to kneel, to blink is to be a mistake
Is a lambs only job to be led to the slaughter?
I've been force-fed malicious contempt
When a nation is built on the pride of compliance
the casualty rests in the blockade of pens
Let it burn,
every fucking flag that you swear by,
every acre sprawling in the width of disease
Let it burn,
every crooked border that's manned by
the worst of humanity, shit shining clean
Let it burn
In dreams I see blue waves crumbling,
pigs squeal for industry, loss of the dream
Let it burn
Corporate tongues salivate for
the blood in your skin, oh, the sweetest sanguine
Choice is a joke told on first class trips
to the meat packing plants, run by predators, hungry
Prophets spew epithets, "Safety or freedom?"
as if either were options in a country of plenty
Carnivorous spectors, their prospects are filled
by the heads in the sand, fucking patriots pride
What I'd give to give up, never serve as a jester
for the redness of mouths or the deadness of eyes
This war has no sides
A promise made I won't leave alive
A predetermined outcome awaits
only those graced with the traits to survive
This war has no sides
A life lived viewed as playful pastime
I'm so tired, just kill the fucking lights
The burden of hope, like a thief in the night
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6. |
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7. |
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Devils lurking
in convenience stores
Pounding the pavement,
out to lick flesh from bone
Gatekeeping breath in your lungs,
a stupid martyrdom
The devil himself in blue,
a working cog of a failing system
Soldiers at playtime
ready up their sticks and stones
A walking embarrassment
of a country burning from deep within
Raise full your pride,
tell me what the fuck do you stand for?
Just a bullshit flag and a vile country,
a heroes tale embellished through make-believe
Sirens spew death as unstoppable hands
move to take from your lungs what their quota demands
Fucking portraits of patriots, gathered in droves
salivate for the steel while they placate their bones
An embarrassing sign from a country that hates you
Morality void, while corruptions a virtue
On display, belly-laugh as their begged to stand down
Just boys having boys fun, executioners rounds
Just existing is criminal, punished in full
for the fear in your blood or the skin on your bones
Raise your hand to your heart, recite, mindlessly pledged
to a sun that won't set, fucking time and again
Fuck every pig
Racist fucking swine
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8. |
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An evening of being eaten alive
No forks or knives, just use your hands
The mess is inconsequential
We'll wash away what it takes just to simply fucking survive
And all the ragged breath living between us
We count the miles on the rocks overhead
Contemptuous fuel are these tired feet dragging
The seconds crawl by for a lifetime of commands
Step forward with your left foot
Let the teeth break the skin, try again
Step forward with your left foot
They're just not feeling the love from within
Cannibalized, made a martyr for fashion shows
Face smeared, embarrassed, the portrait of giving up
Give thanks to empty ears, gods seated patiently,
waiting for wrap-up so they can fuck off again
Progress, a weapon, a facade of a halftime
The sickness won't take what the interest protects
Climbing ladders of limbs with no time for bereavement
Give the blade a bit lip while it slides through my neck
Step forward with your left foot
In desperation, lose the bone, try again
Step forward with your fucking left foot
The sails collapsed to indifferent wind
Step forward with your left foot
Nothing is nothing, right?
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9. |
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Do you still love me with my hair down?
Could your eyes meet mine as our hands brush softly?
Is this a costume brought out just for dress up,
or could I come to love myself in all the ways you've always loved me?
To all the boys I could've loved
To all the girls I couldn't be
To all the steps I couldn't get right
I missed the stars to keep discreet
To all the fire I could've touched
To all the moments in between
This ocean takes with no disregard
I just love the sound of a peaceful sea
Kiss me with lips, unabashed, unafraid of
the dread in my skin, the doubt gripping my feet
Succumbing to skeptics, the ghosts in the walls,
like an onslaught of eyes, like a gnashing of teeth
I still think of her when the lights are low
I still see him crying out, "Tell me please!"
This tear away skin of a bedsheet ghost
Vampire fangs in a sea of trees
To all the breath I lost at once
To all the nights I forgot how to sleep
These legs weren't ever meant to be known
This skin is a reckoning on repeat
To all the concrete that I've paved
An embarrassment at the sight of me
I killed the gods that you knew before
just before they had time to fucking kill me
This skin is uncertainty
These nails are an effigy
I let the fear and fucking complacency
keep me from swaying to a comfortable beat
I just wanna dance in an empty room,
no one but me and you
Can you see me?
Can I believe in you?
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10. |
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I felt the kiss of the sun-bleach
I felt the death as it dusted my skin
I saw my arms burn in memory
The backing band falling out of tempo in unison
In desperation for renewal,
I dry-heave the tar straight from my lungs
And when my eyes regained focus
my body took on the shape of the calm of the storm
Flat-footed steps move on impulse,
aching just to dance without metronome,
but broken feet paint the landscape,
my torso the backdrop, a shaky rendition undone
And for what?
Under heat lamps, I boil and burst like the red of the sun
It's all I've ever done
Beckoning light at the mouth of the cave
with the promise of choice, irrefutable option
Twisting and shredded, my carcass ascends
through the teeth of the current, fissured and broken
The breath in my mouth expands, eagerness, hungry
for solvent and golden, the dreams broken up
Like the bread of the gods, blood of wine and all that shit
A life lived in brightness, a shadowless front
Oh, this blue and cold dominates miles unending!
The grid of my bones, scattered, useless demands
Do we watch it all burn or are we hidden from sight,
fucking patiently waiting for invisible land?
Every second is subterfuge, conscious forgotten
Nothing lives tangible
What the fuck is an option?!
And as motion forgets me, I smile in knowing
the locking of fingers from the face in the concrete
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11. |
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Let's cultivate these dirt-stained teeth
for something better than I'm capable of
Nights spent, gut-wrenched, begged retreat
with white flag eyes and a half mast tongue
I've prayed to depths and to useless gods
I've swallowed glass and chemical conundrums
I found bravery in the bowls of sleep
where I could fake the guts I always thought I'd become
(In someone else's dream)
I watched the red sun sink in a dead horizon
(In golden secrecy)
Again and again until my mouth goes fucking numb
(Do you ever think of me?)
Not a day goes by that your glow doesn't puncture
(These half written apologies)
The quiet finger locked death I've been dreaming of
I gave my skull to the hammers kiss
My lungs melt soft and slow in the breathless
Lacerated and flimsy fists
make art of my insides, overflowing and awkward
Handwritten letters kept up by skin
on this lack-thereof, elevated, triumphant
One side-eye caught above doubtful lips
gave birth to the stars I felt brave enough to claim once
(What silken, saccharine?)
My broken arms splayed in nauseous suspension
(Ink stained irises)
I want the metal so bad I can almost fucking taste it
(Emptied, awed, remiss)
Oh my god, my skin, is this really my fucking skin?
(Nothing, nothingness)
The understatement of eternities forced to live
In day dreams, I'm emptied,
desperate eyes cry, "Move without!"
as white hands move shakily
what was taken into red mouths
This torn skin, an offering
to a hopelessness that knows no bounds
An image forced, a peaceful sea
as sickness cultures my evening gowns
I'm lovesick and lonesome
Vampire fangs and a plastic crown
I'm begging and broken
on uncertain knees with my tongue bound
My ribcage splayed open
releasing doves from the underground
My blood paints portraits in blackened mud
of a love someone else has written about
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I woke up swaddled in blue
On a platter of costly
Little mischievous, ghoulish
Banged the doldrums of ending
As my blood boiled through popped skin
I saw them sing celebrations
I learned that nothing was nothing
That breathing only bred vacant
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I'm not brave enough to wake up yet
If the tongue is a knife, who am I to say?
Just to be is to bare the brunt of the option
Tell me all about what I haven't tried lately
Tell me all about what your gorgeous eyes saw last night
Tell me all about what you think could save me
Tell me all about it while I'm off alone getting high
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this is a concept album about hopelessness, nihilism, and defeat. i wrote this album during a time of absolute fear, uncertainty, anger, and desperation. also i had just read thus spoke zarathustra for the first time.
released October 29, 2021
We would like to thank Jamie, Stephanie, Tayler, KerryErin, Morning Dew, Randy and Essie and everyone who listened to me talk about these songs for a very, very long time. We thank you so much for listening and for caring about our band. We love you 🖤
dane - vocals, guitar, keys/programming
max - drums, vocals
brad - bass, vocals
album art by Yul Rodriguez
recorded and produced in Chillicothe, OH in august of 2021 by Jamie Brown (
RushLimbong.com )