“I love the world” by New Model Army, Album: Thunder and Consolation (1989)

The roll of distant thunder breaks, the afternoon of silence wakes
They hurry through from Petergate as if they know this dance
In fury blind, I drive at night across the moors, the open roads
Beneath the freezing starry skies, racing in some trance
These cities are illusions of some triumph over Nature's laws
We've seen the iron carcass rust and buildings topple into dust
And as the waters rise, it seems we cling to all the rootless things
The Christian lies, technology, while spirits scream and sing
Oh God I love the world

Well I never said I was a clever man but I know enough to understand
That the endless leaps and forward plans will someday have to cease
You blind yourselves with comfort lies like lightning never strikes you twice
And we laugh at your amazed surprise as the Ark begins to sink
This temple that is built so well to separate us from ourselves
Is a power grown beyond control, a will without a face
And watching from outside I wish that I could wash my hands of this
But we are locked together here, this bittersweet embrace
Oh God I love the world

And if one day the final fire explodes across the whitened sky
I know you've said you'd rather die and make it over fast
With courage from your bravest friends, waiting outside for the end
With no bitterness but an innocence that I can't seem to grasp
I know somehow I will survive - this fury just to stay alive
So drunk with sickness, weak with pain, I can walk the hills one last time
Scarred and smiling, dying slow, I'll scream to no one left at all
I told you so, I told you so, I told you so . .
Oh God I love the world

Great lyrics about the roots, the purposes of our progress and civilization, what is achieved and what is lost and the possible ending by causing environmental disaster after its uncontrolled expansion.

You can hear this song in youtube

“Island” by New Model Army, Album: Carnival (2005)

The wind blows keen across the ridge
Black against a charcoal grey
We climb up here by the winding path made so long ago
In the valley below the last few lights
glow just like the embers of a fire
We begin to remember, we begin to remember

We came by the sea and we took the land
We spread out across the plains
And on and on to the mountains
Until there was nothing left to conquer
The sound of chopping trees echoed through the woods
We built the ships and the houses
and the bridges and the fortifications
Until there was nothing left to build with
Now in the silver grey dome of the sky
The birds fly home for winter
And we all come down to the shore and stare across the waves
We've got to get off the island

We carved monuments to the angry gods
We hauled stone across the deserts of our own making
From the standing stones to the villages
To the shining palaces looking out over the water
The soil is growing thin, the yield running low
There's too many of us here, too many of us here
And now ragged ribbons of rain sweep in
As the birds fly home for winter
And we all come down to the shore and stare across the waves
We've got to get off the island.

Great lyrics describing the decline of a human society because of improvident and non sustainable exploitation of nature in an environment with restricted natural sources. Probably the song refers to one of the most famous of such historical events: The decline of civilization in Easter Island in the middle of Pacific Ocean.

We read in wikipedia:

The history of Easter Island is rich and controversial. Its inhabitants have endured famines, epidemics, civil war, slave raids and colonialism, and the crash of their ecosystem; their population has declined precipitously more than once.
Easter Island, and analysis of previous radiocarbon dates imply that the island was colonized late, about 1200 CE. Significant ecological impacts and major cultural investments in monumental architecture and statuary thus began soon after initial settlement.”
"The overall picture for Easter is the most extreme example of forest destruction in the Pacific, and among the most extreme in the world: the whole forest gone, and all of its tree species extinct."
Trees are sparse on modern Easter Island, rarely forming small groves. The island once had a forest of palms, and it has generally been thought that native Easter Islanders deforested the island in the process of erecting their statues.
Jared Diamond gives an extensive look into the collapse of the ancient Easter Islanders in his book Collapse. The disappearance of the island's trees seems to coincide with a decline of its civilization around the 17th and 18th century. Midden contents show a sudden drop in quantities of fish and bird bones as the islanders lost the means to construct fishing vessels and the birds lost their nesting sites. Soil erosion due to lack of trees is apparent in some places. Sediment samples document that up to half of the native plants had become extinct and that the vegetation of the island was drastically altered. Chickens and rats became leading items of diet and there are contested hints that cannibalism occurred, based on human remains associated with cooking sites, especially in caves.
By the end of the third epoch in the island's history, with only one "long-ear" surviving, there were more than a thousand moai (stone statues), which was one for every ten islanders (Wright, 2004). When the Europeans arrived in the 18th century, the worst was over and they only found one or two living souls per statue.
Easter Island has suffered from heavy soil erosion in recent centuries, perhaps aggravated by agriculture and massive deforestation. This process seems to have been gradual and may have been aggravated by extensive sheep farming throughout most of the 20th century. Jakob Roggeveen reported that Easter Island was exceptionally fertile. "Fowls are the only animals they keep. They cultivate bananas, sugar cane, and above all sweet potatoes." In 1786 M. de La Pérouse visited Easter Island and his gardener declared that "three days' work a year" would be enough to support the population.

Also, Jared Diamonds wonders in his book “Collapse”: If some thousands of primitive Polynesians in Easter Island were enough to destroy their environment and finally their society only by using stone tools and their muscles, what about the modern humans of 6 billion with such an advanced technology? The parallelism is striking: An isolated island in the ocean, an isolated planet in space, no place to run, no place to seek for help when total crisis will strike. Easter Island is the best example of a society that has been self-destructed by extreme exploitation of its natural sources.

You can hear this song in youtube

"Master Race" by New Model Army, Album: The Ghost of Cain (1986)

Well we all learned how to use a fork and knife
How sometimes we have to wear a suit and tie
And understand these things are what give us this right
To go around the world acting superior

We live with missiles and the armaments cash
With rewritten histories and a fictional past
And though some of us still have questions to ask
The ship she sails without a captain

Goddam this master race
that we're born in
Goddam this howling wolf
that we're serving

I've had it up to here...
The opposition, we ain't doing so well
Our understanding is weak and our knowledge is small
And though kids scrawl frustration on the back street wall

Most of them can't even spell bastard
Goddam this master race/that we're born in
Goddam this howling wolf/that we're serving

Sometimes all I know is that cold wind blows
Down the valley from the mountain snows
On these muggy nights I lie awake
waiting for the thunder and the skies to break

But they are god and they are strong
And the can name the right and the wrong
And they reclaim the things they own
They call us now...

So candy please forgive these things that I've done
When the master race calls I know sometime that I run
And you mean more to me now than you ever did before
As I try to stay away from their clutches

Goddam this master race/that we're born in
Goddam this howling wolf/that we're serving

The master race, those who think they give answers to and controll everything, who decides that we can spend billions of euros to walk to the Moon, visiting distant planets and verify or falsify theories that has no meaning to the majority of us in a time when global environmental and social problems seems to get exploded. The song-writter condemns this master race, but also feels guilty as being a part of it. Not bonded by blood of course, but probably as born in and being part of the machinery either by giving consent or by supporting it with work, submission and consuming. The song has been covered also by Skyclad, one of the most characteristic environmental rock bands.

You can hear this song in youtube (bad quality)
and some other songs in myspace