Sometimes, you wonder where the revolutionary spirit has gone – not Layers fans, of course, who largely understand the term to mean ‘innovative liquor’ and know exactly where they’ve stashed the concoction of mouthwash, fermented tea leaves and stolen urinal cakes distilled in a copper bed pan ripped from the wall of their secure facility. It’s easy, though, to look at the rest of the population, labouring (briefly, between fag breaks and checking their Facebook status) under the yoke of their privileged oppressors and wonder why there’s not more in the way of revolutionary political movements, thrusting political debate, debunking of untenable dogma and… oh, yeah, that’s why.
Well, at the very least, you’d think there would be more rioting.
Here at Layers HQ, a search of recent compositions has revealed a mellowing of the rage that drove some of our early music and, whilst it’s nice to find that still small voice of calm from time to time, there comes a point to let the beast out of its cage.
To that end, one of the numbers we’ll be committing to a meticulously crafted wax cylinder in the high-tech hub of DB studios this autumn is ‘Tear You Down’ – a barbaric yawp to rail against those culpable for the manifold sufferings around us.
Trembling… terrible… hidden beneath years of vapid acquisition; knee-jerk hatred springs unbidden from your idle, heavy tongue… bereft of hope; your useless mission, the soul’s excision from the world that you sell to the young…
Fuck your reputation, I will tear you down. Damn your temples, I will burn them to the ground. Stand against me, I will bring you down, I swear – I will tear you down.
Feel me burn with hostile rage at this twisted, gilded mess you’ve made: the groping dullards – drunken, aimless… spectre of their youth still fading… but the lines of fate carved on your faces will not erase the words inside my head, they will not change.
Fuck your reputation, I will tear you down. Damn your temples, I will burn them to the ground. Stand against me, I will bring you down, I swear – I will tear you down.
Is our tongue still somewhat in cheek? Well, yes. It’s fun to play and, we sincerely hope, will be fun to listen to. We make music because we enjoy it. If there’s a serious side, it’s not the bald sentiment herein, rather our frustration that there are so few fora in which to vent one’s spleen and to truly challenge the status quo (and if we ever play the same venue, we will. They’re getting on. We could take ‘em…) that it wouldn’t matter if we were subtly joking or actively planning war. We’d still be ignored. Perhaps we need fans in high places instead of upholstered bedrooms.
Buy your MP a copy of the new album for Christmas. Win-win.
Layers out.