Album: Jonah's Ark by Skyclad (1993) part 2

Bewilderbeast

See the brave toreador
just look at him thrive
Off the crowd as they roar.

For death brings a thrill
To the everyday lives of the
"non-com" observers
Who gloat and chastise
My mind can't believe we maintain
This barbarous blood thirsty game.

In their picturesque dwellings the aristo-classes
Spill blood that's not claret from cut-crystal glasses.
Never once pausing to contemplate why
For vanity's victories innocents die.

No better than bloodhounds
Hot on the scent
They butcher their prey
When its' energy's spent
My mind can't believe we maintain
This barbarous blood thirsty game.

Please show me this "sportsman"
You mention with pride
With his dog to defend him
And his gun at his side
If courage is the one thing
Your kind do not lack
Then why don't you hunt something
That can fight you back?

I see only cowardice ridden by guilt
And your hands won't wash clean of the blood they have spilt.
What measure of madness makes you all so ill
That your passport to pleasure's a licence to kill?

So I won't waste my time trying to understand why
For vanity's victories innocents die
'Cus you're all vicious bastards I'm sick of your crap
So I won't bat an eyelid when it's you in the trap.
I still can't believe we maintain
This barbarous blood thirsty game.


A strong accusation against the barbaric tradition of bullfighting. A remnant of old vain perceptions of human superiority, masculine bravery and roman bloodthirsty spectacles that survives as touristic attraction and profitable reasons of local lobbies. We read in INTERNATIONAL MOVEMENT AGAINST BULLFIGHTS site:

Perhaps surprisingly in the 21st Century, bullfights still exist in several countries of the world, much to our shame in what we commonly regard as an "enlightened" era. These are barbaric shows, and relics of the Dark Ages.

Nevertheless, these spectacles still exist due to the powerful lobbies that support them. These lobbies maintain this bloody business for profit, at the cost of animals' pain, torment and death. They have the support of national and local governments, and receive backing from financial enterprises keen to promote their brands as having a "cultural" flavour, and from the fashion media who like to display "chic" images, regardless of the suffering involved. Despite the increase in public awareness in recent years, this minority continues to get rich by torturing bulls and horses. Several attempts to expand their dirty business to other countries are well known. Charitable bullfights to raise money for starving children of third world countries, and to fund research into serious diseases, etc, are blatant attempts to popularise their "sport" and give it a veneer of respectability. If this were not enough, even the Catholic Church does not condemn these acts. It's common to see bullfights in "honour" of saints carried out with the blessings of the clergy.

The truth is, if a creature suffers then there can be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into consideration. All animals are sentient beings that experience joy, happiness, fear and pain, in the same way that human beings do. We can have no right whatsoever to make them suffer for our "enjoyment". If any torture inflicted to an animal deserves condemnation, bullfights are the worst kind of torture since they are performed solely in the name of entertainment. We must end the animals' torture and stop these shows of brutality and violence. It is too small a step from the intentional infliction of pain on an animal to the torture and killing of human beings.

Jeremy Bentham once said: "It doesn't matter if they can reason; it doesn't matter if they can speak; what does matter is if they can SUFFER."



Earth mother, The Sun And The Furious Host

He was just a lad of fifteen years
Who barely fit his breeches
A latter day Dick Whittington
Who dreamt of fame and riches
His teachers took him to one side
And promised him the earth
When all he really wanted
Was a taste of wine and mirth.

They said "Attend our university
Accept responsibility
Chant our mantra of morality
Until your throat is sore."
A feast of knowledge this contrite
Could not supress his appetite
"Please sir I want some more and more..."

Christianity was apparent as a fallacy
The Devil take your Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
The ones who have the answers
Are they who pipe the dancers
Earth Mother, the Sun and the Furious Host.

I'll give the whole nation
A sound education
Welcome to the school of hard knocks
Where the ones who know the answers
Are they that take their chances

For a small fish cast into an ocean
Full of unknown terrors
There's nothing much to smile at
In his comedy of errors.
Where streets aren't really paved with gold
And rags don't turn to riches
In this catalogue of disasters
The models were all bitches.

A Christ on every corner
For a coin he'll save your soul
But it's hard to be enlightened
While you're queueing for your dole.
When I think of all those shallow lies
They fed me in the past
There's one thing I must admit they've taught me...
That is how to laugh
At Christianity (it's nothing but a fallacy)
The Devil take your Father, Son and Holy Ghost
The ones who have the answers
Are they who pipe the dancers
Earth Mother, the Sun and the Furious Host.

This one's for the teachers
Who want to be preachers
Will God keep you warm
When you're cold?
You'd put those wracked by malnutrition
Straight onto your diet of superstition.

A song that reveals the fallacies of Christianity and the human arrogance that derives from religious perceptions of human superiority.




A Word To The Wise

From far outside
Earth's fragile atmosphere
It's clearly apparent that the end is near
The sleeper wakens and removes
His golden casque
Vital signs return to his quiescent craft.

He is truth - a word to the wise
Gods children are so young
They cannot realise
The difference between extinction
And life is now only a matter of time.

In the beginning was the knowledge
He had carried far across
The great unknown
Millenia have passed since he walked
On the savannah where the seeds
Of life were sown.
Yet even deep in slumber he could hear
His children blunder to destruction
The caretaker of creation placed a fail-safe
At the heart of his construction.

Technologies intended
As mans slaves mutated
Now they are his masters
The trust they place in progress
Only serves to bring
The last days nearer faster.

He is truth - a word to the wise
Gods children are so young
They cannot realise
The difference between extinction
And life is now only a matter of time.

I can see the oceans
Stagnent and overflowing
Filled with man made waste discharged
From my cosmic auditorium
I view this crematorium
That is your world at large
My ears hear the wailing of your children
In a future close at hand
Just as it was before - so it may be again
(If you don't try to understand)...
The seas will rise before your very eyes
Until they swallow up the land
If your polar ice caps melt
The cards are dealt
And you have died by your own hands
I will never help you while you still persist
In acting like you're blameless
I would rather let your species die forgotten
So your folly remains nameless.

He is truth - a word to the wise
Gods children are so young
They cannot realise
The difference between extinction
And life is now only a matter of time.

"When to mischief mortals bend their will
How quick they find the instruments of ill."

Another song that deals with human ignorance about their actions against environment and their impacts even towards their existence from God’s point of view.



It Wasn't Meant To End This Way

Sometimes I believe that we're already dead
Each day on the T.V. our last rights are read
Some fair weather oil tanker bleeding its' load
Powder keg powder plant ripe to explode.

Mister Prime Minister hear what I say,
Please Mister President listen I pray.
You have the influence and you have the power
To turn back the clocks on mankind's final hour.

When death is the helmsman who steers "Jonah's Ark"
Tomorrows an iceberg that lurks in the dark.
The band plays our song... it's the Funeral March.


You can hear a song from this album in youtube:
Earth mother, The Sun And The Furious Host