1. ARCHITECTS OF TROUBLED SLEEP

(Instrumental)


2. NIGHT TERRORS

Here’s to the end of another day. Another dream you can’t relate. Another stiff that owns your time, with six more ways to split your mind into the dissociated states that pass for survival. Night Terrors, Sum of all the parts. Cold Sweat, Alone in the Dark. Night Terrors. Enemy of Sleep. Cold Sweat. Freedom to Weep. The death toll pornography they feed you all day comes back at night and it comes back in spades. Dead twin in the room staring back at you, with a message from all your tomorrows: “You Never Get Out”. Are you hopeless enough? Got problems, now you got problems. And we worked hard to lay them in your path. To keep you just hopeless enough. This sleepwalk on broken legs, modern man’s Dance of Death. Here comes the sun, the Trauma King says “Smile and keep moving, you won’t feel a thing”. Night Terrors, Sum of all the parts. Cold Sweat, Alone in the Dark. Night Terrors. Enemy of Sleep. Cold Sweat.


3. MAGIC FINGERS

C.O.N.T.R.O.L., feed you young on the fear of hell. And when you reach down to pull the plug, turn you white with the fear of god. One day I looked down and saw the man feeding rosaries down our throats was holding hands with the businessman who was wringing the blood from all these stones. They said “Do you believe in life after death”? I said I believed in life after birth, and the holy church swallowed hard for the body of Christ. So when they say It’s A Sin, they mean it’s high treason to kill the mule before his back gives out. This is company time. And we never close, we never close. We’ll sink you with crosses and bury you in rows. When they say Every Day is a Gift they mean Blessed Are the Working Poor, whose high hopes pay for all these golden crosses. Never catching up but never stopping, taxed to death and still repenting when they say that you’ll burn up in hell if you die with this mark on your soul. But there can’t be any worse things below than Pascal’s sainted bureaucrats got in mind for the hopeful masses. The scheme is hatched and the priest dispatched. And when they say Amen they mean I Hope You Live Forever Hand To Mouth. I’ve got plans - both my hands on the plug of your god’s wasted love. Both hands on the plug of your god’s wasted love. Kill the bosses, kill the priests, kill the shepherds – save the sheep.


4. ANTIHERO RESUSCITATOR

Prosthetic heroes, didn’t die before they got old. Happy days are here again if you missed it the first time around. Golden Ages on our doorstep, Golden Ages at our door again. These days you can live forever. Prosthetic hearts, infinite lives. Reset. Reset, continue. Reach back, raise your dead, never say goodbye. 459 in progress at the Fool’s Hall of Fame. Some artifacts have gone missing, reanimated all the same. Lived long enough to see the day that we could melt their years away. These days you can live forever. Prosthetic hearts, infinite lives. Reset. Reset, continue. Reach back, raise your dead, never say goodbye. All my antiheroes are dead, gone to far-off beds. And I got orders – Do Not Resuscitate. Leave them in the ground, we’ve got our own frustrations. These days you can live forever.


5. FRIENDS IN THE MUSIC BUSINESS

Hit Record ‘cause it’s all fucking pearls. A bridge-burner to end them all. Don’t want to bite the hand that feeds – I want to fucking break it off. When they say “You’ll never work in this town again”, is that a promise or a threat? Businessmen dressed up like friends, they want to talk about business or friendship. The more confused the better the guilt trip. After all I did for you, don’t you owe me this? Sign the paper, sign the paper, This Document Is Legally Blinding. We the undersigned do solemnly swear by The Plan. To break down on every highway from here to Creation. To play the game and sit still for pictures. How’s your draw? Does it look good on paper? You’d better be someone? Oh aren’t you anyone? Gonna be somebody. We got friends in the music business. They’re gonna take care of all the details. So is it business or pleasure? The more confused the better. Don’t call me and I won’t call you.


6. INTO THE HIVE

What i got, you need in. This is the future, son. Stake your claim, it's almost gone. It's gonna be beautiful, gonna reach the sky & more. There's gold in them there walls. We're tearing down all the neighborhoods, making room for designer skylines, so the lives in the underpass can be left in the dust by a whole new crowd. Units still available, primed for success. Your life in 500 square feet or less. And it's self-contained. And it's all the same. And only steps away from a city that you'll never see, And every ugly abomination that the billboard never mentioned but whose problem, whose life, whose city is that? Show me a man with that much faith in concrete and I'll show you every self-starter that ever put torch to building. Every towering inferno lying in wait. Show me your city plans, I'll show you angry hands Selling the urban dream one locked door at a time. And this is what Air Conditioned Nightmares are made of, The architecture of isolation. What i got, you need in. This is the future, son. Stake your claim, it's almost gone. It's gonna be beautiful, gonna reach the sky & more. There's gold in them there walls. Compartmentalized. Headlong into the hive. City plans that eat you alive.


7. III

(Instrumental)


8. UNNECESSARY PERSON

I longed and I waited for something with teeth and it came in the form of this prosthetic face. All wrapped up in paper like fire trucks for orphans. The eyes were the holes where they burned out the maps that we made. You don’t find your way back from this place. So onwards and upwards, the skies were erected. We fell from great heights but now we try to make the best of our time down here. Half an hour after the devil knows you’re dead, you’ve got keys to the city, striking Faustian bargains. Saying “Did we agree on a nominal fee for the sins of the fathers to be struck from the records? Burn up and blown away. And take every last trace of the telltale corpses and indiscretions we wish would lay low. Lay low. Close your eyes and think of Christmas ‘cause we’re not getting out of here intact. They burn out the eyes, you don’t find your way back from this place. You got keys to the city but it’s nowhere and you’re guilty of everything. But I know a town where you can buy absolution for a song.


9. HEGEL'S BASTARDS

Yellow turns orange as orange turns to red. There’s someone in the TV and they’re fucking with my head. Strings to pull, world to win, where’s it going to crack? It’s chaos by numbers with no turning back. Controlled crisis, imagined and real. Hegel’s bastards taking the wheel. Staged chaos, imagined and real. Yellow turns orange as orange turns to red. Up in the control room fucking with your head. Strings to pull, world to win, where’s it going to crack? It’s chaos by numbers with no turning back. Live on location, dead on arrival. Head-on collision, no chance of survival. Hegel’s bastards, Orwell’s child. Unchecked headfuck running wild. Give me false hopes and false conclusions, falsely immune from the human condition. Give me leaders with strength and conviction and feed me six o’clock executions every day till the end of time. Controlled crisis, imagined and real. Hegel’s bastards taking the wheel. Staged chaos, imagined and real.Give me the vaguest possible enemy and I’ll fight him to the death.


10. DEAD AIR AT THE PULPIT

Good night, hard right. Sleep tight Father. It’s lights out for you, lights out at the altar. And all the lights in TV Land. Where’d you get those pearly gates? How’d you get them here? Face that launched a thousand cheques. Convincing zealot, who’s up next? You better pray. They want what you want, they want it all. They want insurance for their godforsaken souls. They want an alibi, protection from all-seeing eyes. Expensive superstition but it keeps them warm at night. You’re preaching to the retarded, what are they gonna do? Who are these half-dead faithful gonna send their paycheques to? Oh God, send me a sign - ‘cause there’s dead air at the pulpit. Struck down. Struck down on it. Taken, children, taken. So off you go to God. A real live human being need this bed. Real live human beings gonna need these respirators when all the TV holy men are dead. Congregation, eyes skyward to Heaven while holy old white hands reach deep into their pockets for a taste of the Old Time Gospel Hour.


11. GUTTERS

(Paul Bowles just before his death recounts his father's disgust with his life's work, and defends the artistic and philosophical preference for ugliness, negativity and failure as useful and valid subject matter)