cest la vie

tepped off a chair so he could learn to let loose, learn to let loose before the pendulum wore off | his nal sound a gurgle and a cough | and his nal words the pendulum wore off | stepped off a building to nd concrete evidence, concrete evidence that hed ever make an impact | ction splattered into fact | and his ction splattered into another sidewalk painting on display | stepped off a bridge so he could make a splash, to make a splash he had to ounder like a sh out of water | another lamb that chose the slaughter | stepped off a chair so he could learn to let loose, learn to let loose before the pendulum wore off | his nal sound a gurgle and a cough | stepped off a platform and briey made the news, made the news and made the trains run fteen minutes late | oh what a price to pay to be the author of your fate | the trains were fteen minutes late (to be the author of your fate) | cest la vie! a drooling old bitch and a house full of lies | cest la vie! the little things that kill you make you glad to be alive | cest la vie! disease in your genes and ocean levels on the rise | cest la vie! sing a song of living before everybody dies

hair-trigger
hat sweet little redheads got her hooks in my back | she points her nger and she shows me what I lack | her pale skin, it burns so hot in the midnight air | she paints the streets a shade of grey and around my chair | her hot breath on my skin and her scent on my ngers | her taste is on my mind, it constantly lingers | on and on until I can breathe her again | on and on until I can believe her again | on and on until I can grieve her again | on and on until I can leave her in the end | every kiss is a little sickening | I can feel deaths ngers quickening | tightening my passage ways | if you cant count the years start counting days | try to remember that she hates you, and though she might elate you, she tries to kill the great thats in you now | shes hand picked the fate that awaits you, but despite her words its not too late... | I wrote a goddamn love song, to praise everything I hate and kids worldwide sang the chorus line and they sealed my pictures frame | she might run shit for right now, but Ill be damned if its forever and always | as the chorus line fades away like friends in high school hallways | oh, I got this feeling, that things will never be the same what about those rainy nights in london? what about the crippling desert heat? what about all those times you swore youd never leave me? what about the hospital in l.a.? you took me back after that night what about that blackened image in my mind? I swear Ill burn with a new light what about that frozen, dripping holiday bird thats cold? shes cold as ice...

tandem
veryone knows that cancer takes bites of every family | and it eats some families whole | dance around the issue, and take issue with the answers provided | the past few years radiate with treatment, but to everyday shell put her cap on and greet them | shes got demons but youll never meet them | we hope one day that she can nally beat them | she laughs for us | she laughs so we dont worry | she smiles through the pain, and keeps the details blurry | if theres one thing that remains so crystal clear to us, its that the wandering hands of the gods are so goddamn mysterious | like that could be a justication, for the lives it takes and the lives that its shaken | this isnt a eulogy or a requiem, just some words I sketched down because I havent said them | this isnt about her father or brother, just a few simple words so she knows that I love her | tragedy will never disaffect her, I hope she knows how much I respect her | my intentions are not to expose, in verse or in prose, the depths of her troubles arent mine to disclose | but like evening rain on the pedal of a rose, it drips down to the earth and begins to compose | a song worth singing | a wound that keeps on stinging | and that one sinking feeling thats always worth clinging | and a stone at a glass house thats always worth slinging | saints walk the earth | they dont patrol the skies | theyre the people right behind you riding tandem through the night | its the comfort thats discovered between two sets of eyes | its the hand that stills the other | that shakes like candle light

moonlight
awn awake in familiar surroundings | all hotel rooms are pretty much the same though the room number might change | catch a glimpse of everything within the lighters ame | theres always a window but so changes the view | affording a clue to the answer thats owing; where we might be and where we might be going | theres no xed address but the van | white as a suburb as you catch its reection in store windows as were headed in any direction | so press your head against the window | look outside at emptiness | tell a joke, or take a piss, take a picture at every mile | lock the door and start the engine, quince, its gonna be awhile | the climates ay themselves, undress themselves at the side of the road | commune at the union between failure and hope | weave a highway line to stitch a skirt out on the land | twist and turn to tell a story like the palm of your hand | ponder awe and wonder, keep watching the skies | wonder, awe and ponder, in the blink of an eye | turn our weakness into might (keep watching the skies) | turn our blindness into sight (in the blink of an eye) | turn our questions into answers as obvious as moonlight in the darkest, darkest night

tapestry
nd what a fuckin waste of a day, we just lay around and waste away because when that sun goes down and what a fuckin waste of a day, we just lay around and waste away | because when that sun goes down its bottoms up, and we try to reach the bottom of that endless cup | everybodys getting older, but no ones growing up | as the weathers getting colder the room starts heating up | cams hair just keeps falling out and chris just keeps getting fatter | but from where I sit now, on this rickety stool, none of that shit really matters | because this is our versailles, palace on the swamp | listen to me for a nominal fee, you can have anything you want | what matters the most is that bad joke ghost circling your bloated corpse at the end of the haunt | kneel before me peasantry | Im so drunk I cant feel a thing | pledge your allegiance to the fucking swamp king | drunk as hell | dumb as all get out | so pucker up those pretty lips of yours and kiss my ass and shut your mouth | sometimes a knife right through your heart is exactly what you need | sometimes the things that youre ashamed of make you who youre supposed to be | listen to me for a nominal fee, you can have anything you want | (well remain here, well remain here forever and always) | what matters the most is that bad joke ghost circling your bloated corpse at the end of the haunt | (well remain here, well remain here for always) | like one million other soldiers on a thousand other battleelds we wait, wait for the dawn | like a million other soldiers yes we wait... | this is our versailles, palace on the swamp

dunsel
nd when the underworlds best kept secret saw its own reection, I knew things had nally changed (for better or worse, whatever as always) | when the mid-life res start to burn and burned down our one protection, I wont take pictures from their frame (whatever as always) | when the hands that sold me everything, slapped a price tag on my chest | I bit my tongue and shut my mouth, and tried to blend in with the rest | but Im a square peg, Im a sore thumb | and it seems to me this apathy kills the life in artistry and leaves us ankle deep in industry | all these songs sound so damn good, even if their meanings hollow | but hollow words dry out your mouth | you might nd it hard to swallow | all the shit that we keep feeding, to keep ourselves and you believing that no money could change us | then a door opens up, and some devil persuades us | the songs we sung when we were just young have all but lost their meaning | but theres still a few things that we keep on believing... | shitty music just aint worth makin | smiles and thank yous just aint worth fakin | some assholes hands just aint worth shakin | and if it aint broken, we need to break it | theres no such thing as unconditional, though contracts bind you in the end | make no mistake this is a killing ground | blood-hungry and camouaged as friends | select yes at the end of this mess... | if you get there | and its your only fucking option left | these days I dont know the people Im supposed to trust | and I dont trust these people that Im supposed to know | the handlebars on my dreams slowly start to rust | theyll take everything and somehow you still owe | as the cocaine cowboys nally get their wings and sell them all for blow | I make music for myself | not for hat tips from the upper-tier and their undeserved wealth | heres to their failing fucking health... | I dont mean this in a hateful way, but when the people you love start walking away | the walls get tighter each and everyday | you better take your last bite before it crumbles away | and theres something inside me I just have to say; love nothing, trust no one, just live for the motherfucking day

the reign of unending terror

ach word bitten, every fuck is pronounced | with conviction written, injustice announced | and every hand that feeds is bitten if it steals from hungry mouths | convention be damned, I know who I am, and some words are just too fucking loud | they cant be ignored! | twice our bitter life-time tucked tightly in their belts, but spat and bit in such a way that you know just how it felt | what it means to be a man and what it means to refuse it | things I learned along the way while listening to their music | so laugh then cry, well try but laugh again | throw your hands up in relief that twenty years wont end their reign | the reign of unending terror | the rain that brings us warning | the reign that breaks the sky and gives us hope for the end of this long night | red sky, morning light | the truth is, somedays I dont have any morals at all | I left them in the mens room, at the truck-stop, in the second stall | and thats the kind of enemy, that obscures the very core of me | my shallow lacking, and disbelief steps back while ipping through the sleeves of cd books with cold-cocked hooks, ip the kings uplift the rooks, spit on the diamond cuffs of the real crooks | when you look in my eyes who do you see? | when you look in my eyes who is it?

termites
inn always the djinn | I always take one on the chin | the devil dogs and scorpions peel away and wear my skin | the smokeless ame | the common name | less than the angels but more of the same | no paradise nor grethor will lay their claim | whether the intentions are violence or just mundane | with the wind he disappeared, conrming everything that I feared | the time passed is shown by the length of his beard | salayman stands dead on his feet | waiting for termites to resolve his conceit | (in the mountains, in the seas, in the airways, the disease) | we are not gods | death comes to us all | but tonight Im invincible, tomorrow Ill crawl | (in the mountains, in the seas, in the airways, the disease) | the djinn in this bottle, just dont let him drown | next lesson you swallow, might be hard to keep down | taste the penalty of the blazing re | taste the penalty, sing with the devils choir | jinn always the djinn | never thick and never thin | thicker than blood, less than kin, the rattletrap-night ends where it begins

tongue-splitter
psychotherapist once claimed I had acute neurosis | well, I only said a couple words and he made his diagnosis | he said I could say whatever I want because I never chose this | so I spat and grinned and I looked at him and blew him a glasgow kiss, look out now | I close just one eye, and let a part of me die | never too sure if its the truth or a lie | Im not asking for your pity oh woe is me sarcastically | Im not losing sleep pathetically, while waxing so poetically | but Im waning, waning, alphabetically | and I keep dropping bombs, dropping bombs, dropping bombs apologetically | it was a wicked whimpering winnipeg night, when my tongue grew wings and took to ight | the thought had never crossed my mind before that moment | is the truth so bent it cant be broken | my jealousy got the best of me, and had a conference with the rest of me | it said if this is all thats left for me, then theres a little room for regret | and that little voice hey | little voice hey | little voice inside my head said if you dont regret nothing, then you might as well be dead | so I apologize | mostly to that four or ve guys who stand behind me on that stage every night | as the mic starts to whisper, and the words start to blister in my mouth, that I know arent right | Ive gotta get back to who I was before my last ten years on autopilot | its the mask that quite often starts to eat into your face | so wear it lightly like a hat, that can quickly be replaced | Ive gotta get back to who I was before my last ten years on autopilot | so tell me again, how my life should have been, before I was spineless before I gave in | because everybody thinks its timeless, well times running out | one thing Ill never regret is I never shut my face

sex tapes
eres looking at you, kid! | It was gonna leak eventually, so eventually it did | and bad news travels fast, I think | in minutes half the country will be stiff inside their pants | all the editors are hard, and all the journalists are wet, and all the boys are jerkin off in private on the internet | the manager is sweating, parents smoking cigarettes | it doesnt matter, if the vision atters, its the nudity and that much is understood, (that much is under...) | and it better be good | cause she looks hungry on that tape | yeah she looks starving in that limelight | in that sickly green, she might have been a girl I know or a place Ive seen | all the editors are hard, and all the journalists are wet, and all the boys are jerkin off in private on the internet | between the sweat and the silhouette | between the drink and the regret | have your ll but dont forget everyones naked somewhere on the internet | the jonas generations got rings wrapped round their dicks | the whole world waits with patience for one them boys to slip | reected, directed by one simple fact | be careful what youre looking at because it might be looking back | in that sickly green, she might have been a girl I know or a place Ive seen | a fantasy that Ive foreseen | get it up, get it off online, get it up, get it on get it off online

Arif Mirabdolbaghi | Luke Hoskin | Moe Carlson | Rody Walker | Tim Millar
All lyrics written by Rody Walker except: cest la vie, moonlight, and sex tapes lyrics by Arif Mirabdolbaghi All music written by Protest The Hero Produced by Julius Juice Butty | Mastered by: Joo Carvalho Tracking at Jukasa Studios: Engineered by: Nick Blagona Assistant Engineers: Darren Jeter Magierowski and Jonny Harris Drum Tech: Jeff Zurba | Guitar Tech: Andy Mack and Greg Pavlica Tracking at Silo Recording Studio: Engineered by: Julius Juice Butty | Additional Editing: Marco Bressette Guest vocals on hair-trigger and termites : Jadea Kelly | Additional keys: Tim Millar Guest Vocals on sex tapes by Chris Hannah of Propagandhi Additional vocals: Julius Butty, Porter and Luke Hoskin Themes in sex tapes inspired by Prelude in C# Minor by Sergei Rachmaninoff Pre Production: Cameron McLellan and George Hadji-Christou Management: Larry Mazer at Entertainment Services Ltd Canadian Booking: Colin Lewis at The Agency Group US Booking and international: Josh Kline at The Agency Group European Booking: Marco Walzel at Avocado Booking Artwork by Jafar Petgar | Design & Layout by Ben Goetting