No Substance lyrics

Like a morning crow and his unwelcome song
Or a worn-out broken record that keeps skipping along
Mountains of instructions you keep piling on me
Resound like a cacophonous symphony
But I don't wanna hear it anymore
Priests and politicians pretend they're your friend
And police speak to you like you're a child again
Blanket statements cover you like a rug

Here inside this quiet room there's direction
Outside in the sultry noon-time reflection
A million scurry they are looking for advice
None willing to lend charity just exercise their
Shades of Truth, and partisan convention
Shades of Truth between dispirate lines
Shades of Truth interpret my intentions
You don't know I'm alright
Who authored the blueprints and made us captains

England seemed like such a beautiful place from afar
Until one day I went and saw how miserabely how things really are
All Fantastic Images they only are apparent
Propagated just by hope and desire to share it
Beauty was the allure that brought me close to you
Loneliness was the bond that made me stick like glue
All Fantastic Images they only are apparent

You have got your stranglers and prowlers in soft shoes. Furniture makers,
carpenters too
Bombers and commandos, all with some lost cause
Disgruntled workers, immersed in veritás
But stealthily, in the land of the free, he's lurking there
Most are unaware of
The biggest killer in American history
And god shed his grace on thee
Business institutions universites

History doesn't make something right
Consensus is not a fact-based exercise
You're tied and bound to this selfindulgent enterprise...
We call America
A brush with a star, a token of love
A name in the sand, enough is enough
A diet of air, a face on the net
A fish your palm, your television set
Once you convince yourself
The universe falls into place
You've got your ideas
And your posse of friends

fa fa fafa fa fa fafa Raise Your Voice!
Don't be played like someone else's board game
Don't be classed out like some desolate redoubt
Don't be misled you've got alot on your head
And nobody's gonna pay attention when you are dead
So: fa fa fafa fa fa fafa Raise Your Voice!
It's the primary rule, you gotta wanna be fooled
It's our daunted restraint that keeps us silent in shame

We all know politicians only go
Just half-way there
Just half-way there
The innocence of youth needs protection not abuse
But no one seems to care
Yet no one seems to care
And you sit there adn watch the world go around
From your pseudo-benevolent vantage point
While we who've been left to pick up after you
Try our best to make some sense for those who
Come next

Our Apocalypse 1981
Teenage vagrants lookin´ for some fun
A renewed promise of prosperity
A vulgar platform for the world to see
We were
The hippy killers
Busted refuse from broken homes
Pocked flesh and malacious bones
Creatures sustained by desire, heart, and soul
Nothing to leave and nowhere to go
We were
The hippy killers
Good days during horrible times
Overused bodies, neglected minds

Neighbours, nobody loves you like we do.
Neighbors, your government has triumphed in finally making you a public fit
for the 21st century.
Never before has a governing body shown so much concern for the economic
well-being of its subjects.
Today we have insulated you from countless factions who threathens your
financial viability; such as the poor; the idealistic foreigners still

Since the start of the 17th century
There's been the scent of unseasoned wood burning in the air
And the conquest of nature meant nothing at all
While we betray exception we take all that is there
Motives are transcluent in the reflection of shame
The actions ghostly remnants of our ancestral ways

And unwittingly, you just take your place in this parade

Look around the country, an abundance you'll find of
Mediocre minds
Sift trough the fodder as the sane justice declines because of
Mediocre minds
Shrouded under cover, the most flamboyant guise hides a
Mediocre mind
You got yours but you can never bend mine with your
Mediocre minds
When the cry foul you had better watch out becaus you never know which
aptitude they'r griping about

What will prove to be our big mistake
Short-sighted arrogance all for what sake
Our families to ashes, our ambitions to dust
Our progeny in silence thinking "what about us"
But don't forget
The dance of neglect
The march for empowering prosperity
The pain from loss and want for mere lucidity
Just maternal residue, and I was there too
And maybe so were you

A mutinous enemy carved a nascent country
Sweat, blood, and valor
Forms the grit of our history
Beqeathed to everyone:
Chance and free expression
Substance was restrained
And the spirit was broken
I feel a strange denial
Rythmic as a change
Constance as time
Lonely
Insistent whispers
Somber as a wave bye bye
Searching for solution, without constitution
Blackcoats by our sides
Promising salvation

What you do is what you are
And wishing upon distant stars
Won't improve the hole you're in
Won't absolve your deepest sin
But action is no gift from some covert and lofty god
It's dependant and weighty all the same
And it is oh so easy just to keep to yourself
But then you're at the mercy of imbeciles
Now I didn't make up the rules
But clearly we are led by fools
It is wise to know their ways

You want prosperity
For yourself, but not for me
Somehow you just can't see
We're in this collectively
You think that freedom is
A drastic severance
From your past relations
Just a quest for new bargains
We're not the same person
We're not the same person (Don't even wanna know)
Wooohhh
Don't need no good advice
Nor shoddy merchandise
I'm the suspect device
Beaten down, unable to strike

I can see the shadows on the wall
Drifting as the leaves start to fall
Unfazed by rugosity, the objects yield to gravity
And depict the destiny of us all
No one really knows why we die
No one gets a break so we try
Ignoring mortality, we worship mediocrity
And wait to see what happens up on high
In so many ways we live to follow the sun
In so many ways we exalt and fail as one

Bad Religion - Shattered Faith (Bonus Track)

The scientist purported that there ain't no purpose
and the theologian told me that it's all been designed
and I'm trying to maintain objectivity
The world won't illuminate what really matters
and I'm an imperfect modal/moral meaning extractor
processing the complexity
Born of the Earth (Are we blind?)