If hip-hop is the night club of music,
The place where everyone wants to be,
Then, metal, you are the abandoned trainyard,
The gritty reality of close friends,
Bonding over empty cans.

Bluegrass might be a picnic,
With blankets in the park.
And rap might be the ghetto,
Urban streets,
Perpetual fear.

However, you have a different touch.
Sure, phat dubstep beats sound great,
When blasted by waves of bass.
But what of the feeling,
From uncountable bass pedal strikes.
Creating a wall of hard-pressed consistency.
And when the bass drum stops,
You know you'll hear a well-practiced,
Well-executed,
Well-written fill.
From the snare, to the toms,
To the chinas and splashes.
32nd notes all around.

And if punk is a bunch of teens,
Landing one out of twelve tricks,
At the local skate park.
If reggae is a house party,
The place your parents don't want you,
But where you feel happy.

Then metal is where you feel REAL.
A darkened elementary school,
Yours for the weekend,
Reminding you where you came from.
Years and years of practice,
All leading up to a perfectly nailed arpeggio.
You don't even hear the pick as it sweeps,
String to string.
You only hear notes and scales,
Arranged just so.
Pure dedication,
Displayed by the clean solos,
And harmonies,
Which fall back into downtuned chugging,
Rhythms,
Simply rhythms,
True unison,
The brotherhood dynamic,
Of a lesser-liked genre.

And the sounds of the world,
Are the way you go to school,
To work and home again,
And silence,
Is nights spent alone,
Silence is the absence of passion,
Silence is suicide,
Death.

Metal, you are my resonance.
My threshold.
And the words,
Repeated throughout my mind,
Are not shrill notes on the treble-clef.
They are not auto-tuned, worthless.
The words I feel,
The words I live,
Are the common words and phrases,
That no one can understand,
The deep grating and churning,
Of vocal chords that learn not to ring,
But to shout.
To scream.
To growl, like the guttural and primordial calls.
Of our wild side.
This growling echoes,
From throat to mind.

Metal is my flag,
My skin,
My pyre.

The frequent phenomenon of this empty place,
Gathering energy it cannot replace,
Submerged in darkness, foreshadowing night,
Paroxysm shook, stirring up light,

Out from the chaos four beings stood,
Together infused, singular brotherhood,
Light blends them all mistaken into one,
Thirty-five times stronger, than the power of our sun,

Welcome to the dream; a death omen quartet,
Witness the rider, perceive his regret,
With a single companion, and a crown forged in death,
Perpetually doomed to a violent last breath,

Pioneering our concept of constellations,
Bent at the handle, insidious oscillations,
Corruption was constant, like a plagued medallion,
When he collared his confederate, a maniacal stallion,

Couriers of desecration, colonial devastation,
Oxidizing nations, burning depredation,
Lord and auxiliary, imperial arrogation,
And with a single voice, they declared themselves king,

Welcome to the dream; a death omen quartet,
Witness the rider, perceive his regret,
With a single companion, and a crown forged in death,
Perpetually doomed to a violent last breath.

Strapped to a metal pedestal settled suspense,
Immensity measured and tethered by lust,
Must we divide and conquer inside; no longer a function of life,
A junction of strife in cities hidden from light,
Bid me goodnight, and rid me of this hideous sight,

Morals, the core of oppression, ingestion of thought,
Caught what was thought to be biologically right,
In spite of the might of indifference, this hindrance of soulful construction,
Social abduction, post-spoken eruption,
Advocating the case of natural basis of bonds,
Longing to wrong the call of the wild, all but a child,
Meanwhile, the style of trend takes a turn, bend break and burn,
Churning up thoughts from a mind at peace,
Find the beast and follow the least traversable way to converse.

False analogy calls imaginary lies,
Breaking the ties, hating the cries,
Tracing her eyes, creating these marked and darkened black skies.

Lyrical miracles do exist, I admit,
so as I sit, for a quick minute, I'mma reminisce,
Listen, I'm missing a process of thought,
Time line, my mind, this whole mess I've got.

Born three pounds, three nouns make my full name,
A push-and-pull game of life, givin' me dull pain,
One fifth, (pressure) I just missed a difficult,
Hit list, playin' witness 'til I quit this

Quest, yes, I'm movin on now, calm down,
First grade I might'a made this town hear me all around,
Instead I was quiet, lyin' low, so they named me,
Social outcast, framed and blamed, I hated me,

Slackin' on work, askin' for hurt, with my big dreams,
It seems I day-dreamed infinite possibilities,
But real life lasted, the glasses and hand-me-downs,
How I needed whacked braces and contact cases,

The places and people, that have come and gone,
They make everything in life, right and wrong,
So it's up to me, to live, up to my dreams,
But when they break, I shatter myself, split at the seams,

The only person workin' for fun, instead of need,
Was a boy thinkin' "anythings real", just like me,
Every day spent on that field, went up to shield,
My childhood, tiled protection, like denial should,

Birds of a feather, growin' up together,
Becomin' brothers by exposure, the closure I never had,
Best friends bonded, wanderin' through a haunted world,
Which hurled the darkest and worst bids, at hurt kids,

Standing straight, armed with warmth, and mental chimes,
We vanquished reality, warriors of the mind,
But time and reality are two faces of the same dime,
And years of a system glistened acid over woven vines,

Grades expanded, and we had exponential growth,
We sighed, said good bye, to a playful child's ghost,
Betrayed the imagination shapin' our former selves,
Wastin' away, new school structured like a bookshelf,

But time is always changin' the face of my local space,
And before I knew it silhouettes had left without a trace,
I foresaw the end of us. I could no longer pretend,
A town isn't so big unless it separates you from a friend,

Preoccupation took over, no verse of mine,
Could show me the relevance, telepathically inclined,
Fading understated, late and waiting for the cost,
It slipped my mind, and soon all of my hope was lost,


Now fast forward, a license, height, I'm slightly grown,
Up. Intrinsically fascinated by things insightly shown,
Nothing was grand, but I had a rough plan, for it all,
BAM. On my way home I received a phone call,

These tall walls of mine had all but fallen down,
Slow pain quickened like a king, tippin' off his crown,
Those days faded into a week, and at last,
I realized, my childhood friend, had passed.

While the world sleeps,
A shadow slips down a dark road.
Distant noises of tires on pavement,
Echoing through the hills,

The shadow, a boy,
Takes long strides,
Down the desolate drive.
His layered clothing,
Keep him safe from cold.
Yet, the only warmth,
Comes from his legs,
Blood pumping slowly,
The only notion of his existence.
Tobacco taste in his mouth,
More than he wants,
More than he needs.
A trail of ash,
Leading in circles,
Going nowhere.

Glancing upwards,
Speckled white on a purple back-drop.
Stars, given shape,
And given meaning.
The strangeness of night.
When the rest of the world,
Knows nothing.

Lofty currents raise a cloth flag,
Inked patterns, shapes and representations,
One icon, replicated a millionfold,
And yet,
Where are we taking this flag?
For as it is our wing,
Holding us high,
It is also the cloak we bear,
As we plunge through caverns,
Diving through murky lakes.

And, in the way of caverns,
They're so much deeper than we believe.

Now, let us venture counter-clockwise,
Close your eyes,
Strain your ear,
For the memories,
Of long ago.
Where our world,
Was small, balanced.
And the legends,
Speak to us,
Of six Behemoths,
Who began small,
Yet still evil,
And they devoured
Beings around them,
One by one,
Growing stronger,
Exponentially.

Their shadows fell across valleys and mountains,
And their breath fueled the great winds,
Their roars were thunder, and their strikes lightning,
And so, they began to dominate the very fabric of reality,
Shielding our small eyes from whence we came.

Our voices carry on,
Through the waves and turns of time.
The echoes swell up from our own vocal chords,
As past, present, and future all ask,
Who will save us now?

Break the mainframe,
Burn the framework,
Rally the work force,
And force them out.