Bad Religion : No Substance

Punk-Rock / USA
(1998 - Atlantic Records)
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Lyrics


1. HEAR IT

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
And thet tell me maybe I'm acting a little too smug
But I don't wanna hear it anymore
Every day we hear the secrets of life
Reduced to cheap jokes, poetry, and friendly advice
They'd rather see us all pusillanimous
Absorbent in their chorus of correctness
But I don't wanna hear it anymore


2. SHADES OF TRUTH

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?
Someone proclaimed creation, people listened
While children by the millions are thrown into this zoo
The so-called gift of clarity!
Oh what was God up to?
Shades of Truth, and lenient conventions
Shades of Truth, between dispirate lines
Shades of Truth interpret my intentions
You don't know I'm alright
So many walking paralell and pull their blinders tight
So few offer apology and accept others rights
And nothing absolutely can be cherished in the end
Can't we all accept that it will all happen again?
Just partisan convention
Shades of Truth between dispirate lines
Shades of Truth interpret my intentions
You don't know I'm alright


3. ALL FANTASTIC IMAGES

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
Promoted by desperate hope that things are somewhere better
I don't have a thing against fantasy
But to chase it down just don't make sense to me
If you're only hope is simply peace and love
You end up discarding most of what you're made of
All Fantastic Images they only are apparent
Promoted by desperate hope
And the need to share it


4. THE BIGGEST KILLER IN AMERICAN HISTORY

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
Both are quite the circus where the killer wants his way
I think of Edward Teller and his moribund reprise
Then I look to Nevada and I can't believe my eyes
It's time for hime to die!
Most cannot remeber minutia learned in school
It's not there on the blackboard, it's what they don't tell you
We have got a problem, it starts and ends right here
It can be defeated but you've got to face your fear
We'll join and unite and steady our sight
Then we'll put it right `cuz it's time to fight
The biggest killer in American history
And god shed his grace on thee


5. NO SUBSTANCE

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
You all make up rules
And the fun never ends
But still there's a problem that leaves you gasping for air
You look for some meaning, blank smiles are all that's there
And still water stales a soft summer breeze
You cling to your hopes while your drop to your knees
There's no substance
Once you convince yourself
The universe falls into place
You've got your ideas
And your posse of friends
You all make up rules
And the fun never ends
But still there's a problem that leaves you gasping for air
You look for some meaning, blank smiles are all that's there
And still water stales a soft summer breeze
You cling to your hopes while your drop to your knees
There's no substance


6. RAISE YOUR VOICE

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
It's our nature to be adversarial and free
Our evolution didn't hinge on passivity
Fa fa fafa fa fa fafa Raise Your Voice!


7. SOWING THE SEEDS OF UTOPIA

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
Now what have you done to foster the truth
Besides just hide hide the lies?
Besides just hide hide the lies?
A selfish campaign never justifies the gain
But the means are verified
Yeah the means are verified
And you sit there and insist you are right
From your popular psychological podium
While those who rely and depend on you
They wilt because you don't accept we need
Each other
Whule sowing the seeds of Utopia,
You invoked a convenient amnesia
You forgot how to care, you forgot how to provide,
You forgot how to work toward a meaningful life


8. THE HIPPY KILLERS

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
Should to shoulder we formed as one
The next miserable generation
We were
The hippy killers


9. THE STATE OF THE END OF THE MILLENIUM ADRESS

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
clinging to their childish notions of social welfare; why, you're even kept
uninformed of useless propagandist journalism that reports alleged
violations of human rights (We all know they wouldn't have been punished if
they hadn't been doing something wrong!!). And who better to dispens such
blantently evident factoids but a self-appointed authority like myself?
Acid Rain is a thing of the past... Too many possible causes, too little
signifigance for our modern thinking public, besides industrial
manufacturing is at an all time low anyway, who needs those narrow minded
laborers anyway. Too many mouths to feed, and to many burden on the pay
roll! Who needs 'em? Here in the land of the free-time. Someother ass
back-ward country will give us what we need by exploiting its uneducated
children.
The Internet has expanded our ability to pacify average americans better
than ever by offering fantastical adventures to every corner of the
imagination. Your home office is the window to your world, and the heart of
your social life. Such reclusive behaviour helps clear the roads and public
works from overburden like the lower middle-class and others who depend
shamelessly on their government. Today you are freer than ever to do what
you want, provided you can pay for it!
Remeber, the first word in USA is US
We have arrived neighbours, we are the priviliged elite!


10. THE VORACIOUS MARCH OF GODLINESS

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
The voracious march of godliness makes us all the same anyway
Since the dawn of our human family
There's been concentrated sepsis blowing in the breeze
And we turned on each other with ferocity
Desperation, forced, without reprieve
But the missions were misguided and the trammeled led astray
The air resounds with thunder as the victors seized the day
And the haunting voice of history lives ignored but not betrayed
The voracious march of godliness will get us close to heaven one day


11. MEDIOCRE MINDS

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
Don't act too smart for their stenoscopic ways
You'll be discarded away
Reason's not to be what the privileged define with their
Mediocre minds
So many sighted people act so helplessly
Blind from their
Mediocre minds
If you want attention then you will be asked to bend but the surest
insurrection is enlightenment
Then you can live outside inharmoniously
An enemy
They wanna keep me locked away
`Cuz I'm an overactive brain
Leaders, presidents and the nightly news guys cater to
Mediocre minds
Reason's not to be what the privileged define with their
Mediocre minds
You got yours but you can never bend mine with your
Mediocre minds
The only natural thing that I despise are
Mediocre minds


12. VICTIMS OF THE REVOLUTION

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
When something is won it comes with sacrifice
It's there beneath the joy, the glory, and pride
And rarely it's acknowledged but in positive light
Consciously omitting the losers plight
But don't forget
The dance of neglect
The craving for community that never was met
The longing for status and the overture of regret
With no one to deter, pathetically unsure
Forgetting who they were


13. STRANGE DENIAL

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
Advocating dogma as tickets to hereafter
Mortals in their prime
With their desperate hands in the air
Daunting
Complex and burning
Rythmic as change
Constant as time
Conflicts
Craving approval
Weighted as a murder trial
Oh I feel a strange denial
Correct is Consensus
Everything else, nonsense
Forward is the hope
Forget recompense
Peace and tranquility is only for the wealthy
Dearth for the massses
And inequality
I feel a strange denial
Rythmic as change
Constant as time
Lonely
Insistent whispers
Dissipating in the night
Like a lone forgotten light
And no one is helping me
It's a strange denial


14. AT THE MERCY OF IMBECILES

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
So you know how not to behave
But sometimes we find ourselves in desperate need
And we look to those with privilege and power
It's then we learn compassion sits inert on their shelves
We're at the mercy of imbeciles
NO Actions is no gift from some masked spirit in the sky
It's reducible to flesh, mind, and bone
And it is oh so easy just to keep to yourself
But then you're at the mercy of imbeciles
Imbeciles (x3)


15. THE SAME PERSON

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
We're not the same person
We're not the same person (Don't even wanna know)
Wooohhh
And the sun comes over us again
We lament, we pine, and we rescind
And we ask for understanding
But arent't we the stingy ones indeed
When it's needed from us in the end?
We watch the days go by
Compete and then we die
So few ever ask why
But so many just abuse the design
We're not the same person
We're not the same person (Don't even wanna know)
Wooohhh


16. IN SO MANY WAYS

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
In so many ways we want so bad to be done
In so many ways we show our pain in unison
Something in you is busy counting the days
Catapulting you trough the haze
Blind to virtuosity, ignorant of your sanctity,
Revealing you, in so many ways
In so many ways we live to follow the sun
In so many ways we exalt and fail as one
In so many ways we want so bad to be done
In so many ways we show our pain in unison

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