Tried to write something off a funk drumbeat, aiming at a sort of Rage Against the Machine feel and given I'm into Warhammer 40-k, the beat suggested the refrain and I went a bit political with it.

The Emperor Protects

Burn the heretic
Oppression
Kill the mutant
Projection
Purge the unclean
Infection
The emperor protects
He’s naked

Suffer not the witch
Oppression
Refuse the xeno filth
Projection
Attain our destiny
All nations
Die for God and creed
abomination

Build it back better
Purgation
Make it great again
Inflation
Refuse to be replaced
Conflation
His invisible hand
Descension

The Emperor protects
No clothes
The emperor protetcs
No soul
The emperor protects
His own
The emperor protects
He’s naked

You are so blessed in his Light
Exterminatus gaze
Spending lives like coin to find
Anathema remains

FAWM 2022

The Emperor Protects

FAWM 2022 attempt. Was listening to Limp Bizkit the other day and decided to attempt something in that vein and the song 'Dad Vibes' made me want to tackle still being an alterantive kid from the 90s/00s 20 years later, but now a grown up with responsibilities and stuff.

I'm generally not that sort of player/singer (and when I was, I tended more to Deftones than Bizkit) plus I only detuned to Drop D rather than B or C so not as low and chunky as proper nu-metal but I had fun with this.

Lyrics

Two decades plus guess it’s more than a phase
Still a deviant though theres bills to be paid
Things move along, what was nu is now retro
Though the times are a changin doesn’t mean you gotta let go

Evolution is a must,  can;t live in the past
See more than I did as a teenage asshole
Taste for rebellion, now with substance & passion
Less a bairns rage, more community action

Still solace in headphones, the gig is a church,
Just balancing it out between kids and work
That’s not surrender, it’s keeping it real
Though turned to the plough, don’t doubt the steel

Diagnosis found, the kid’s still alive,
Bearing the mileage of a detoured drive,
We’re all mad in here, and we’ve stories to tell,
So jump in the pit, we’re going to hell

I’m not growing old
Not selling out
Putting down roots to stand my ground,
I’m not growing old,
Still acting out
Spreading my arms to shelter now 


Two decades plus guess it’s more than a phase
Still a deviant though theres bills to be paid
Taste for rebellion, now with substance & passion
Less a bairns rage, more community action

Still solace in headphones, the gig is a church,
Just balancing it out between kids and work
We’re all mad in here, and we’ve stories to tell,
So jump in the pit, we’re going to hell

You'll Grow Out Of It

FAWM 2022 track 11.

This started from listening to the track released to promote the Food Fighters new movie and some weird gatekeeper backlash online about how extreme metal doesn't need help from Dave Grohl, which reminded me of the Probot record he did various metal singers. So I thought I'd do something that was aiming at death metal of sorts and the notional working title was 'Probiotic' as a smashing of Probot and Biotech vs Godzilla.

Anyways, this morning I hear that Russia invaded Ukraine and the notion of wargames came into my head, reminding me of the 80s film and that kinda became the inspiration for the lyrics, which are kin of a rant about being a millenial and sold a shiny future which has been snatched back from us rather than my original draft which was about trying to make a probiotic shot sound all metal and stuff (which was fun though, might come back to that.)

Of course, I'm totally not comfortable with screaming as a singer so I went with spoken word over the chunky guitars and I kinda dig the effect.

Lyrics

Growing up in the 80s was a trip,
Most of our food was so processed it glowed,
We’d dance to 99 Luftballoons and read 2000 AD,
We’d watch Mad Max and terminator 2, hear news stories about Chernobyl or see our mum;’s gay pals die of AIDS. 
The idea that we’d all go up in a nuclear fireball just seemed, inevitable like background radiation

Then the wall fell and they said it was the end of history and it would be nothing but peace and growth and prosperity forever.
Well, for who, exactly?

Then the towers fell and the recession hit and the pushback against the slow advance of minority rights came on full force, and we realised that despite going to college as we’d been told, we weren’t as well off as our parents had been at our age and that the brightness in the future was the fires of fascist book burnings, a climate apocalypse and or, the nuclear war wer thought we’d escaped.

Fuck this future, fuck these asset stripping, power crazed clowns, playing wargames in the middle of several global emergencies,,
Fuck this millenarian culture war, witch craze, death cult, baying for blood cause other people have the cheek to be a bit different.
Fuck these pyramid scheme cashing out techbros, busting unions and trying to sell us digital monkeys as the world literally burns.
Fuck this future, we deserved better, our kids deserve better, 
It’s better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.

The End of History

Another FAWM 2022 entry. This time inspired by the four chord challenge and a discussion on a Warhammer fan page (the Fluffenhammer)as to whether Space Marines have bones, which got even sillier and ended up spreading onto Twitter and dragging in authors like Adrian Tchaikovsky (who gets credit for the image used.)

Anyways, this is what my mind made of that...

Lyrics

Idiots and fools 
Cant they see that the rules
Which I play by
Are different
Why cant they see
That my mastery
Defies restriction

My study of evolution shows
It repeatedly goes
To cephalopod
And for good reason
Versatile and strong,
At any pressure they belong
And multiply camouflaged

You may say this is heresy
But I say this is art
An act of sub creation
Deviating from the form
Of what we are

And they shall know no fear
And they shall have no bones…

But tentacles aplenty

I submit to the board
My strongest retort
Without contrition
My work will continue
Though unblessed by you
And you’ll see
I was right all along

You may say this is lunacy
But I say this is inspired
An act of sub creation
Deviating from the norm
Of what we’re meant to desire

And they shall know no fear
And they shall have no bones…

Make no bones about it.

A Disregarded Note of Censure From the Ethics Board

FAWM 2022  effort 13 - was listening to some Lamb and Tricky and thought I'd attempt some trip hop. 

Lyrics

Here's to the kids that fell through the cracks
Sweat blood & tears walked through hell to get back
Only to find this work didn't want us
Now those who wandered do need to get lost.
In the drinks, the dreams, the pills, the pages, the art, the antics, the stims and the stages
So much more that we're taught to be seeing,
When accepted ourselves as liminal beings. 

We are we are, in our own fime and apace
We made it so we could stay (safe)
We are we are, in our own time and space,
We made it so we could remain. 

Off on an adventure, a final frontier
Escaping all that draws out the tears,
Step through the portal, into the book
Rise above punching down the snark and the looks
Make a roll to save, a trip through the night,
Dance and laugh till the daystar bright,
Back to reality, pull on the mask,
Carrying worlds with you to make it last.

Through The Cracks

I remember that I hadn't used my new resonator at all during FAWM and that kinda slid to men a sort of southern gothic vibe. Ish.

Lyrics
They called the last month the blackness,
And the first the wolf burrow.
From the blood of hosts murdered in violation of guest welcome
And women dooked and burned as withes,
This last has remembers.

From people murdered so their body parts could be sold to doctors,
To cannibals in the hills, and generations bought & sold for oil and gold,
Theres a reason we plant rowan trees against evil spirits
And the land remembers.

We wear it well, with smiles and arms open wide,
But we drink too much and hold each other back.
From rogues and revenants, this land resonates
Sick saints and sinners, to sleekit saviours, this land needs a saining.

Or we’ll never deserve better.
And that kills me.

Resonance (Caledonian Gothic)

Fighting For Life

First track for FAWM 2024 from the #movietitlechallenge hashtag - has nothing to do with the movie, but the notion of an outpost led to a musing on growing up in a small town and a wee chord progression just fell out

FAWM 2024

Outpost

Second track for this years FAWM attempt.

"They make a desert and they call it peace,
The make an empire and they call it a family
They take your truth and call it a deceit,
They chain you down and then call it security

Let the rain fall…. down

They make a desert for a dividend share
They keep on talking as we’re pleading for clean air
Can't help the weak but got to kneel for the King
When they say people should be treated as things

Let the rain fall…down"

A Desert

Third track from this year's FAWM. Notionally named 'Tonesy' as I was going for a sort of shoe gaze-era deftness vibe. Lyrics are frankensteined from three Scots poets - Robert Burns' 'tae a louse', Hugh MacDairmuid's 'A Drunk Man Stares at the Thistle' and Edwin Morgan's 'Kiss Me.' There is a intended theme but its up for interpretation.

By My Pretty Floral Bonnett (I Will End You)

Track four, I think of this year's FAWM. Trying to do a song for the modal challenger and picked C Lydian. Strumming out the chords put me in mind of Man in the moon by REM, Tonight, Tonight by Smashing Pumpkins and  I’m Happy To Be Here Tonight by Idlewild. The lyrics just kind of fell out, very much a neurodivergent PoV.

Try Hard(er)

a super rough cover of "Burn" by the Cure from the OST to "the Crow" deliberately produced a bit rough with mistakes and timing slip-ups left in - all run throughs are first take...

chriscrowing

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