StG 44

Lyrics

I was born in the panic of 1944.
Stamped from cheap steel while the ceiling shook.
They gave me a thirty-round curve and a heavy wood stock,
And wrote my mechanics down in the history book.
I was ten pounds of desperate, late-winter math,
Chambered in 7.92 by 33, a shortened breath.
I was meant to hold back the closing of the door,
But I already knew we had lost the war.

I am afraid of my children.
I am afraid of the blueprint I became.
I was the first to put the fire on a toggle switch,
The first to marry the volume to the aim.
Look at the world. Watch the flickering news.
Every curved silhouette is a shadow I cast over you.

Before me, a rifle was a patient, heavy thing.
You held your breath, you pulled, you worked the bolt.
I gave the thumb a selector, a simple little swing,
So the hand didn't have to think before the jolt.
The tool became the reflex before the mind could see,
And every rifle after was a memory of me.

I am afraid of my children.
I am afraid of the blueprint I became.
I was the first to put the fire on a toggle switch,
The first to marry the volume to the aim.
Look at the world. Watch the flickering news.
Every curved silhouette is a shadow I cast over you.

They took my gas system, they copied my skin.
They milled it in the East, they pressed it in the West.
I sit in this museum case, perfectly dim,
While my millions of bastards are outliving the rest.
I only fought for a winter before the snow turned red.
I didn't know I was drafting the future of the dead.

I am the ancient one now.
The grandfather asleep in the glass.
But I can hear them out there.
That endless, stuttering pitch.
Waiting for someone
To finally turn off my switch.