Chainsword

Lyrics

I am a ridiculous proposition.
A woodsman’s tool painted in holy red,
Heavy as an anvil, smelling of promethium exhaust,
Waiting for the thumb to press the stud.
When I wake, I am a god of friction,
Forty-eight diamantine teeth blurring into a single line.
I make a cathedral of the noise,
I make a religion of the grind.

But my terror is the sudden quiet.
The moment the fuel line chokes,
When the roaring stops and the cordite clears,
And I am just a heavy, blunt iron joke.
Without the scream, I am nothing at all.
Just eighty pounds of dead weight, waiting for the fall.

I was drawn to be the loudest thing in the dark,
A jagged exaggeration of what a blade should be.
The tremor climbs the gauntlet when you hold me,
Until your radius bone hums in sympathy,
Forgetting how to be a normal hand.
I tear through ceramite armor, I jam on the soft marrow.
I am not a scalpel. I do not understand tomorrow.
I only know the hungry rotation of the track.

And my terror is the sudden quiet.
The moment the fuel line chokes,
When the roaring stops and the cordite clears,
And I am just a heavy, blunt iron joke.
Without the scream, I am nothing at all.
Just eighty pounds of dead weight, waiting for the fall.

They pray to the casing, they light the incense,
They pretend I am a noble relic of the war.
But I know what I am. I am a motor and a chain.
If the teeth stop spinning, I have no meaning anymore.
Idling at twenty-eight hundred cycles a minute,
Just to prove that I am still alive inside it.

Keep the throttle pinned.
Keep the thumb pressed down.
Please.
Don't let the chamber run dry.
When I stop shaking...
I don't know who I am.
Just a brick of cold steel.
Left in a very quiet room.