1. |
Committed to Collapse
02:33
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Their methods of control
Cloaked in benevolence
Systems designed to twist your mind
Into accepting this
Resistance hibernating
But there’s no point in waiting
Sleeping, dormant
Awaiting insurrection
Illusion of safety
False pretense of protection
When the hammer drops we’ll be the first to go
We’ve put our beliefs on display for the masters to know
(Broadcasted, recorded, databased and sorted)
Our shrines of self-worship disintegrate
Foundations built of just whicker and clay
Programmed to plummet
Destined to decay
Committed to collapse
We carry on this path
Step after step
We count our last breaths
One second closer to death
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2. |
A Crime Against No One
02:12
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Captive minds
Locked from inside
Swallow the key
Lower the blinds
Tune into static
Turn out the lights
Turn up the tension
Narrow your sight
You put conditions on what can’t be quantified
An inability to see through others’ eyes
Consumed by actions which have zero consequence
React with vicious spite and blind intolerance
Your anger has no virtue
Our differences can’t hurt you
You fight against the gamut of expressions of the planet’s love
From crumbling pedestals
You spew your vitriol
Decrepit rhetoric
From failing vocal cords
Tie the tongues
Dissect the text
Extract the lines
From codices
Selective reading
Flawed fundaments
Twisted translations
Dead testaments
Contempt constructed by your insecurities
Age-old denial of dissimilarities
Obsolete archetypes, expired social roles
Futile attempts to fight that which you can’t control
Your hate is antiquated
Your prejudice outdated
Your logic comes undone
A crime against no one
Immutable, you turn the volume down in vain
A vibrant chorus resonating all the same
Are they your own hidden desires
That cast the blameless in the fire
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3. |
Blowback Effect
03:25
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A continent on fire
A crumbling empire
A climate of distress
Violently manifests unrest
Our failure and our shame now in plain sight
We can’t escape the blame
We’re blinded by the light
The karmic crash of centuries of pain
The city and the forest burning all the same
(In flames)
Our boots upon their necks
Our privileges unchecked
Blowback effect
The fuck did we expect
The fuck did we expect
Fury unbound
Injustice so profound
A boiling melting pot on stolen ground
The blood of empire spills over the sides
Can’t fight the current of the turning tide
We drown
Our comforts only serve to weigh us down
A continent on fire
A crumbling empire
We fail to reconcile the guilt
For all the blood we’ve spilt
Look what we’ve built
We’re all looking for easy answers
We all want to make order from chaos
But like praying to stop a cancer
Our impotent methods betray us
Our beliefs confine us
Let our grief define us
With the consequence of our negligence
Lurking just behind us
We can drink to the future
We can toast to a brand new day
But the hands of the butcher
Leave a stain we can’t wash away
We can’t wipe the disgrace from our name
Our crimes too numerous to count
An incalculable amount
Condemned to reap what we have sown
This bitter fruit that we have grown
The pendulum swings back
The echo of the whip still cracks
The chains still rattling
The blood it boils black
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4. |
Nothing Will Change
02:39
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Nothing will change
Just a rearranging of corporate interest
A bidding war
To ensure continued loyal service
To feudal lords
In modern serfdom we laud our freedoms
Distressing options eclipsing reason
We place our faith in repeated misleading
Hope-selling, retelling of transparent falsehoods
They barely conceal ulterior interests
(They’re play-acting poorly but we prefer comfort)
Pretending our system isn’t a business
(Our moral delusions eventually crumble)
That these opportunists might represent us
That they possess just a vestige of conscience
In open ocean they scuttle the ship
The lifeboats will only have room for the rich
A passage we never were meant to survive
The cynics we silenced and pushed to the side
We underestimate
The absolute absence of care
Those in commanding roles
Commit to the burden they bare
They are not here to serve us
Is it that we deserve this
Are we destined to kneel
Acquiescing to these
Structures we won’t question
Remain on our knees
Or is it possible for an alternate path to be set
Most times it feels like the cards have already been dealt
(And we’re just left here)
Expected to settle the debt
In open ocean they scuttle the ship
The lifeboats will only have room for the rich
A passage we never were meant to survive
The cynics we silenced and pushed to the side
Hope manufactured, betrayal awaits
The body politic laying in state
We cast our votes in this temple of fear
Our ballots uncounted, the outcome is clear
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5. |
Designer Afterlives
01:50
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Let me up for air
I breathe it and I disappear
My bones turn to dust
Can’t hold my interest
Rephrase the absolutes
To expedite the search for truth
No shortcut to enlightenment exists
But you persist
With vicious sacraments
In sterile temples rich with artifice
Might please the eye
But not the consciousness
Receptors stimulated
Spirits still enslaved
You’ve glimpsed the sun but backtrack to the cave
You know the truth but prefer lies
Designer afterlives
Eternity contrived
Collective eyes
Turn inward
They’re burning in the shine
The blinding glare as our
Trajectory unwinds
You invest heavy in the lie
Combusting in the fires of time
Dull promises of immortality
Subliminal appeals to vanity
Apochryphal divinity
Our chains won’t set us free
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6. |
Immensity Condensed
03:04
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I’m done with hope
Our dialogue is finished
I often choke
But this has no beginning
No words to set the scene
Just cruel reality
The coldness of the world
Just one more battle for me
I try to keep the spark alive
A four year sentence for a nine to five
We all grind just to live
But there’s limits to what we possess to give
Obsessed with being somewhere where I’m not
Orientation? No destination
Rewrite the narrative, ignore the holes in the plot
Somehow not disparaged by aging’s unprejudiced onslaught
Clinging to the vestiges of youth
Overinvested in selected truths
We all use our perception
To filter out the indiscretions
We all choose to shape the world according to our views
And when our rigid frameworks start to crystallize we lose
With pressure so intense it’s natural to build defense
We lose ourselves while trying to find some sense
Prescribing worth to patterns purposeless
Immensity condensed to fit our narrow lenses
Minutia magnified without a greater context
Convinced we’ve got it figured out
I can’t help but entertain my doubts
Collecting the dust from the creases
Frantically flip through the pages
The pressure increases with each passing stage of this unproven thesis
I’m done with hope, our dialogue is finished
I’m a patient boy but we all have our limits
A familiar scene, just cruel reality
The coldness of the world, just one more battle for me
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7. |
Void Ritual
03:47
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Born in a critical age
When history moves at a faster pace
We are torn from our natural state
Thrown into the fire and baptized by flames
Cremated as a rite of passage
Shrouded in smoke and drowning in ashes
Translated from ancient dialects
These smoke signals tell tales of violence
Encoded into failing mainframes
A Rorschach test from dissolving bloodstains
Compressed encryption from the astral plane
Direct transmission to the victim’s brain
An overload to control the senses
A neural code to unlock transcendence
Complete awareness, complete dependence
Delete the ritual devoid of reverence
Ascendance ascertained
Ordained to lead us to a shallow grave
Depraved
Exaggerate the aptitude for change
Unwilling to commence the steps to break away
The cycle more cemented every day
Ingrained
Resent the repetition but exalt the altered state
Survive the spiral of new dawns, new shames
The pieces fall apart and rearrange
Estranged
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8. |
A Better World Rejected
01:37
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There’s no nature in privilege
No greater logic in oppression
But you construct facades
Of reason and justification
Arrogantly weave a narrative to explain
Systemic, ceaseless suffering in your colonial domain
Our efforts misdirected
A better world rejected
The glaring injustice apparent to all
Who assume objective perspectives
And see through the boundaries imposed by the powerful
Keeping us all disconnected
An overwhelming tide
Of hatred created by national pride
Religion and history can’t justify
Extinguishing innocent life
An intifada to resist apartheid
And the slaughter of the millions occupied
Our struggles are connected
A better world rejected
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9. |
Brand New Hell
02:13
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What brand new hell is this
Damnation with a twist
Devils with face-lifts and fake tits
Sell you the suffering so slick
You’ll withdraw everything to pay for it
Withdraw your mind
Purchase declined
Withdraw and wither, disconnect
From all perspectives that reject
This backwards march into a wretched destiny
We shine the boots on Orwell’s stomping prophecy
We scrub the fragments of our cranial debris
Cephalic detritus
There’s no hope left for us
Our future’s set in stone
We face the void alone
No guiding hand
No well-laid plan
No saviour to return
Alone we’re born
Together we will burn
What lies in store for us
This task of Sisyphus
Under the weight our backs will break
Disintegrate and turn to dust
Carried away by winds so ravenous
Commit us to the past
Our legacy won’t last
Fragmented histories we’ve chiseled onto glass
Transparent heresies, revered iconoclast
Sacred uncertainties, we walk the darker path
Divergent harmonies, we sing our song of wrath
No history will replace us
Myopia will erase us
As time retraces the same tired route
As alternate realities grow mute
As future generations follow suit
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10. |
Stumble Through Seasons
02:30
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Still pacing circles in this cage I’ve built myself
Serving sentence without repentance
Deflated dreams collecting dust upon the shelf
My future dimming and my prospects thinning
These laboured musings of a lunatic
Expelled so gracelessly, no tact or subtlety
The noose of time grows tight around my neck
I’m deemed unfit but the charges stick
I stumble through seasons, they change too abruptly
I’ve weathered this gale of regret quite adeptly
I’ve listed my grievances, made my demands
I’ve drafted this treatise with unsteady hands
Struggling to stand
(Mumbling curses)
The hour hand
(Stalls and reverses)
I’ve wandered down these crooked paths before
Now they’re overgrown and my age has shown
I’ll fill this dirty glass for the last time
With ill intent I’ll put my pen to paper
I’ll weave a truth out of these tangled lies
And leave the mess for you to deal with later
Awake, arise
Let the sun hit my dead eyes
Condemned, confined
Daylight strikes me blind
Reword, revise
Recontextualize
The phrases I frame to make sense of my life
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11. |
Centuries of Suffering
02:05
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Shadows grow longer over burial plots
Cadavers hidden under shallow layers rot
Nameless unholy martyrs we’ve forgot
A hex to mark the spot
Sleeping serpent stirring
Prophecy unfurling
Every desperate warning
Strangely reassuring
Watching as the fault lines widen
Parallel timelines colliding
Fissures in our minds now shining
Casting blinding light on dark horizons
Torn from our places, faceless we recede
Into the sealed crypts of memory
Away from prying eyes, disguised we hide
In anonymity
Let no man enter
Let no man leave
Avert your gaze from the bereaved
Enshrine the guilty beyond gilded gates
Blood moon entombed
A darker dawn awaits
We sing off tune in choirs of hate
Silence the critics and repeat our mistakes
Cursing in dead language
Centuries of anguish
Voice of reason strangled
Destinies entangled
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12. |
Chorus of Discouragement
03:44
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I coat myself in blood and ash
To camouflage my true intentions
‘Cause when this suffering comes to pass
I think its hardly worth a mention
That this terminus we’ve been drifting to
This aftermath we’ve been sifting through
Is all part and parcel of the same mistake
We thought we’d roasted at the stake
So take that hatchet out of your back
And bury it in my fucking face
It’s a postscript I’ll embrace
Give in
A chorus of discouragement crescendos
In vain I stir the dying fire’s embers
As I externalize my deficiencies
These alibis become priorities
Compartmentalize all the dreams I’ve killed
Uninspired and unfulfilled
Caught in a cycle
Disconsolate future
Despondent and spiteful
My screws coming looser
I’m blurring the boundaries
Of dreams and reality
The simplest confounds me
I’ve lost rationality
Falling to pieces
I’m doomed to repeat this
Route that leads nowhere
My maps obsolete
The compass keeps spinning as I drag my feet
Nearing the summit I look for a view
Searching in vain for a sliver of truth
No trail to guide me, no landmark beside me
I’ve been here before but my instincts divide me
Failure ahead, regret is behind me
One life to live, I just keep climbing
Sleepwalk through landslides
Somnambulant alpine
Guided by visions
Misreading the signs
Torn between choices
Confusing the voices
That echo through valleys that stretch beyond time
(Analysis pointless, no reason or rhyme)
We trace a circle in the dirt
To welcome back the apparition
That we worked so hard to banish
From our nebulous cognition
When it vanished our relief
Was joyous, genuine and brief
As scars once healed opened up again to bleed
We held our dripping limbs above the seeds
That they might grow a new myth for us to believe
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Selfist Vancouver, British Columbia
Selfist is a hardcore punk band residing on unceded Coast Salish territory.
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