These are desperate times
Demanding desperate measures in kind
Callous decisions, ruthless ambitions

Fear the other, fear the stranger
Watch the skies and watch your neighbour
Show no mercy to the traitor, and no remorse

We view the world in black and white
A world where only might makes right
A place of brutal need, with no pity for the weak
Where safety is not certain, and kindness is a burden
And survival is not guaranteed

There is a price…
For every choice we make
For every decision, and every mistake
There is a cost, and you must decide
What are you willing to do to survive?

Now the blood is in the water, and the wolves are at the gate
And the ones who were the hunters are now hunted by their prey

Kill or be killed is now the law
Compassion is a weakness we cannot afford

There is a price…
For every choice we make
For every decision, and every mistake
There is a cost, and you must decide
What are you willing to do to survive?

Action breeds reaction and provokes retaliation, feeding the
Cycle of suspicion that has driven us too far
Callous calculations, and the coldest of equations, weaving a
Self-destructive pattern ‘til our mutual destruction has been assured

A price for everything, for everything a price
A bloody toll to pay, for every virtue, every vice
And now the time has come for us to choose our side
Because there is no room for weakness among us
And only the strong will survive

Dark forest doctrine
Dark forest doctrine
Dark forest doctrine
This is the only way
You’re either predator or prey

And now behold, a feast befitting famine, a decadent display
Of shameless arrogance and ignorance barely disguised as disdain

What have we done to deserve such callous disregard?
Watching them grow fat upon our labour as we struggle not to starve

Manna for the masses, perpetuates the lie
With bread and circuses they keep us meek and pacified

You must beware, the path of good intentions, it paves the road to hell
And those who claim to lead you will not pay the toll themselves

How much of this can we endure?
Til we cannot swallow any more

All that glitters is not golden
And empty promises are easily broken
Leading us into starvation
Feeding us a liar’s banquet until we choke

Gnawing at the feeble scraps, falling from their table
Forcing us to claw and scratch for every meagre morsel

Barmecide feast
Belly of the beast
Bite the hand that feeds you
Before it bleeds you dry

Bite the hand that feeds you before it bleeds you dry

All that glitters is not golden
And empty promises are easily broken
Leading us into starvation
Feeding us a liar’s banquet until we choke

Barmecide feast
Belly of the beast
Bite the hand that feeds you
Before it bleeds you dry

Barmecide feast
Decadence deceives
It’s all an illusion
There is no honour among thieves

Rejoice, rejoice, for you have all been called
To live and die in service of a greater cause
To offer up your lives like wheat before the unforgiving scythe
In holy martyrdom, a willing sacrifice

Keep the faith, and reap the harvest

But first you must be fruitful, breed and spread the gospel
And if they will not hear you, then they will learn to fear you

Indoctrinating the youth
Control the future, dictate the truth

Swarming like locusts we spread from the hive
Certain of purpose and single of mind
We are the chosen, children of the lord
Sworn to spread salvation…

Obey, obey, and all will be forgiven
In the act of your contrition you will be absolved
You shall be the vessel, from which we shall bring forth
A quiverfull of children born to inherit and conquer by faith or by force

Inheritors of our design
Messengers of mercy, arbiters of who is worthy

Armoured by belief
Ready and willing
All of us armed to the teeth

Swarming like locusts we spread from the hive
Certain of purpose and single of mind
We are the chosen, children of the lord
Sworn to spread salvation by the sermon or the sword

This is how it always happens, faith begets fanaticism
A viral strain of madness bordering on masochism
Conditioned to believe that...
We are the chosen, the favoured children
Glorious of purpose, both a blessing and a burden
Commanded to convert, and spread our creed across the earth

So blessed be the fruit, that the lord shall open
Every seed another soldier, every womb another weapon
And every honoured mother
Another martyr for the cause

The weight of your words
Is so much greater than you truly know
They leave no mark but still they take a heavy toll
Wearing us down with their constant attrition
No one learns, no one listens

No one is willing

To even try
Or even to pretend to see the other side
They simply bow before
The justice of, the baying mob
Howling out for satisfaction
For the slightest of transgressions

So let this be a lesson

Better the abuser, than the one abused
Better the accuser than to be the one accused

Who are you to call us the enemy?
Blind to your own naked hypocrisy

Factions speak louder than herds
Drowning out the voice of reason
And the weight of every word
Builds another wall between us

Pass your jealous judgements / cast your petty stones
Swift to discover the sins of another / but so slow to realise your own

Better the deceiver, than the one deceived
Better with us than against us, better wolves than sheep

What gives you the right to such cruelty?
So much envy, so little empathy

Factions speak louder than herds
Drowning out the voice of reason
And the weight of every thoughtless word
Builds another wall between us

We are still at war, against an enemy
Whose name we do not seem to know
Whose face we cannot clearly see
But still they serve a purpose, and keep the surplus population
Cowed into submission, terrified and easy to control

Follow the leader, shocked into awe
Like lambs to the slaughter…

We send the poor
Clad in their tattered rags to fight the rich man’s war
While their own sons and daughters, work behind the scenes
Keeping their hands clean, telling us that in the end
The greater good will justify the means

Partisans and patriots, draped in faded flags
Reckless in their stolen valour, shameless in their martial drag

Constant conflict, war for profit
Filling their coffers and lining their pockets
New disasters, made to order, shedding blood on barren soil
Corporate mergers, sanctioned murder, trading human lives for oil

The price of peace is endless war
This is what we’re really fighting for

Nothing ever truly changes,
Only the names, and only the faces

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain
Just listen closely to the ones who pull the strings
Our is not to question why, our is just to do, and then to die
No hope of victory, no end in sight

Constant conflict, war for profit
Filling their coffers and lining their pockets
New disasters, made to order, shedding blood on barren soil
Corporate mergers, sanctioned murder, trading human lives for oil

And to the victor go the spoils

This is the price we pay for peace
From each according to his wealth
To each according to his greed

First they came for the weakest
And I was silent
Then they came for the strong
And still I held my tongue
So when they came for me
There was no-one left to bear witness
To my defiance

This is how the unacceptable, becomes the unremarkable
And what we once thought was impossible, becomes our daily bread

How quickly we discover
How easily we turn upon each other
When there’s nowhere else to turn

This is how the new absurdity, becomes the next atrocity
Condemned by our complacency, to watch the tragedy unfold
This is how democracy dies in the darkness
While good men stand aside, and keep their selfish silence
Afraid to speak or raise a hand

Unwanted, unwelcome
Untouchable, unclean
Persona non grata
Inhuman and obscene

We hide our heads in the sand
And wash the bloodstains from our hands
And reassure ourselves the fault is not our own
But ignorance is not the same
As innocence, we’re all to blame
For history repeating over and over again

We’re all at fault, we’re all to blame

Silence is surrender
Silence only serves the oppressor

We won’t be silent any longer

Unwanted, unwelcome
Untouchable, unclean
Persona non grata
Inhuman and obscene

We're all unclean

There is nothing else to fear
Nothing else to fear but fear itself

So why do we still listen to the lies that they tell us
The sickness that they try to sell us
The countless ways that they coerce us and compel us
By sowing discord and division, all to serve their own ambition

Divided we are conquered
Easy pickings for the vultures
Preying on our paranoia
For their own gain

Rumour, slander, spreading fear and propaganda
They lit the match and fanned the flames
And now the world is burning...

A mindless conflagration, of manufactured rage
Bloody libel spilling out on every single spiteful page

They fill their pens with poison
And wield their words like weapons
Callous comments cutting deeper
Leaving wounds to weep and fester
They try to hide, their venom deep inside
Locked behind a crooked smile that doesn’t reach their eyes

Straw men and paper tigers
Leave no trace but burn much brighter
Blinding us with smoke and mirrors
While they make their plans

Distract, dissemble and deny
Distort the facts, defend the lie
Obfuscate, obstruct, obscure
Until there’s nothing left but…

Rumour, slander, spreading fear and propaganda
They lit the match and fanned the flames
And now the world is burning
Liars, conspire, to set it all ablaze
With twitching tongues and tapping fingers
They dig our common grave

Carefully constructing their illusions
To feed the mass delusion
With subtle sleight of hand and clever misdirection
They conceal their true intentions
Til it’s far too late
Fabricating fact from fiction
Turning villains into victims

Rumour, slander, spreading fear and propaganda
They lit the match and fanned the flames
And now the world is burning
Liars, conspire, to set it all ablaze
With twitching tongues and tapping fingers
They dig our common grave

This is how the world will end
Not with a bang but the stroke of a pen
You’ll sign away your life in anger
Sell it to the highest bidder
Who promises to keep you safe
And keep the outside world at bay
To build a gaudy, gilded cage with no bars
As everything else falls apart

Complicit in our own control
Conditioned to conform
We pledge allegiance, blind obedience
For our own convenience

Now the best lack all conviction
But the worst are filled with passion
And the rest no longer even seem to know the difference any more

This is how the world will end
Not with a bang but a whimper instead…

Building bigger cages, forging longer chains
All to preserve the illusion of freedom
The status quo must be maintained, at any cost
No matter what lines must be crossed in the process
Counting our losses, selling us safety and calling it progress

So what will you choose?
The freedom from or freedom to?
The good of the many, or the greed of the few?

We are the blinded, led by the blind
Unwilling to believe, what’s right before our eyes...

Burning all our bridges, building our walls
Raising them higher, only to watch as they fall
Into ashes, everything passes, as the colony collapses
A fragile house of cards we built on the backs of the masses
Still toiling in vain

The imbalance of power is shifting
The ivory towers are falling one by one
The tables are turning, and Rome is burning
And all our best laid plans have come to less than nothing

We are the blinded, led by the blind
Unwilling to believe, what’s right before our eyes
We are divided, by lines we have drawn in the sand
An isolation that we cannot withstand

They say the rising of the tide, will lift us all in time
Another empty promise, to keep us all in line
They tell us to be patient, to bide our time and keep on waiting
For salvation, waiting for a day that never comes

This is how our kingdom comes undone
And all the ties which bind us
Blind us to what we’ve become

We are the blinded, led by the blind
Unwilling to believe, what’s right before our eyes
We are divided, by lines we have drawn in the sand
An isolation that we cannot withstand

We built ourselves a system, a pure and perfect vision
With all our best intentions for a better world
We made it in our image, merciless and unforgiving
And far too late we realised that we had erred
For what we built was a lie
Corrupted by its very nature and design
A shining symbol of our flaws and failures
A monument to compromise

All the kingdom’s horses
And all the kingdom’s men
Were not enough to give us safety again