As the Roots Undo

by Circle Takes the Square

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06:17
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5.
05:09
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6.
06:42
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7.
09:33
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about

As The Roots Undo opens with a shout of truth: "Rejoice, rejoice, a noble birth!" This trio from Savannah, Georgia, makes torrid, complex scream-ola on this astounding full-length debut, charging its Napalm Death-style time swerves and Fugazi-like guitar meat with a rare, heated male-female vocal attack that puts the X in emo.

-- David Fricke / Rolling Stone --

credits

released 06 January 2004
Recorded and mastered by Anthony Stubelek at Rockstudio, Brunswick, GA.

tags

tags: alternative diy hardcore punk experimental rock grindcore metal noise post-hardcore post-punk screamo Brunswick

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Track Name: Intro
Rejoice rejoice a noble birth...
Track Name: Same Shade As Concrete
Rejoice, rejoice a noble birth, a prince is born.
Behold the birth of violence, beasts of fang and feather cry for our concrete rapture,
and if we beg to be put down, unto us the most inspired storm.
A princess ravaged by her prince behold; the birth of sex and distance, two frail corpses both were they, his eyes were the first to stray... every tree held fast the earth to sky.
Concrete replaces every branch and twig as they were frayed upon the birth of ambition. The heavens filled our gilded vessel with poison tears, before we drink, I propose a toast, a final prayer.
Here's to the watchers in the wood, here's to the last days, unto us a most inspired song.
Shaper, stop the music.
Halt the harp strings whose chords confuse our histories with textures.
With the disheartened chorus of a hymnal whose choir is the conviction of the starving, artless, tempted by the feast of proof that this body of work has worth.
Uncertain as the fingering of a chord torn prematurely from a piano's womb.
As we fill our precious lungs with concrete, that faithful shade, a shaper's song is stopped short- a dying breath a sinking shore.
Then the only movement and the last remains of grace:
Pollen falling off the simple hinge joint leg upon the final breath of a dragonfly.
A cardinal, lost but headstrong in mid flight cries for our concrete rapture, wade...
in the water, wade. Let the flood swell, thank the storm for her tears.
The faithful say its beautiful, its god's will
but the fool knows what the prophets have seen, no salvation's impending.
The faithful say its beautiful, its god's will let the flood swell and the bodies that break we'll just float down the river. Stay tame, soft river, while we weigh our faith, stay sweet, run softly, sweet river, the fool who wades in doubt will float like concrete.
Come and fill your lungs. Come and fill your lungs.
There's so much hope buried underneath tragedy, its the same shade as concrete.
The faithful say its beautiful, its god's will, let the flood swell
on the loudspeaker sermons and a parish descending.
There's so much hope buried underneath tragedy, its the same shade as concrete.
Let the flood swell.
Track Name: Crowquill
Nothing's so lucid as the promise of dreams, but these pills we found just make me sleep.
There's nothing quite so pure as the written word my dear, so lets have ourselves a little poem.
Until the will to speak loses urgency.
Our animal indecency in print is so blase.
Its about the bell tower, at the golden hour.
Angel of the spires climbs her steel cage staircase spine, angle of desire.
Ascend the wrought iron, one by one, wrung by wrung.
Is it the rising roof line that makes me feel so swallowed whole,
or the way my body barely pricks the sky,
the same as a century's worth of virgin's blood that's passed through my longing veins,
scheming to convince my aching mind that pleasure's got nothing on the miracle of need.
Nothing's so purile as meter and rhyme when you can't see the ground from that ledge and this perch is so far, far from the nest.
Gravity doesn't grant me the privilege of failure my bough never breaks
I don't stumble into anything
so I climb and I carve my initials in the bark with that feather I found but its all so contrived.
My genes didn't bless me with the foresight of a sage but I know how this will end, in apologies and ink on the page.
A slowly constructed crow quilled confession of my spirit to all of you,
black waterproof ink scars the board, so hot-pressed, pristine and pure.
A slowly constructed manifestation of "to tremble",
as base as a bridge in a song and less like the poem that I promised you.
Nothing's so lurid as haiku-detat on sidewalks in white outlined chalk,
all I've got is this ink smeared lines.
With our voices in harmony, the offering, of a crow quilled threnody.
Track Name: In the Nervous Light of Sunday
Whispers invoke the artists of this tragically seemless, ill fated tapestry,
blistered fingers are tending their loom.
She collects the strands to braid into life.
Logging the weft of an ageless, woven infinity, countless raw fibers are clawing the frame.
A woman's work is never done, but the final stitch has got to come,
and so three witches contend to slice the very last thread
(that you curse, curse constantly)
But nothing's immortal, and comfort is not guaranteed-
a yearling who bears our sincere passions is chosen, frozen and quivering,
like a thread in the wake of a blade.
So we compromise, so we sacrifice.
Compromise nothing, but that which secures a comfortable life, risk as the indication of a healing sacrifice.
Destroy the altar whose boundaries tides will never exceed, ignite the pyres underneath a sedated mythology.
Five decades his lifetime, and his life's work is just fading scratches in stone.
She tends the numerals, counting fingers, counting her toes.
Keeping track of the time racing, years wasting
(dance to the sound of his weight bearing back breaking)
infinite ages the length of this quilt's making.
And we dance, we dance in the stronghold...
That you curse, curse constantly, of the needle's sheen.
Do you feel this thin strand resting in a pinch?
That's the thread that you curse, curse constantly.
An eternal patch on a quilt that hangs from a wall in a throw frought with our decay...
From six states away, five years of guilt postmarked four days before my escape.
All I ever asked was for a clean break.
In the first nervous light of the day,
collecting the novels whose scribes sought to keep me contained.
My dad's favorite novel on top of the pile, in the self concious first light shake the memory of his smile, igniting these volumes, igniting these volumes I'm warmed by the flames.
Alter the deafening earthen tones...
In the nervous light, I dance in the nervous light and I'm warmed by the flames.
Dance to the sound of his weight bearing back fucking breaking.
Alter the pitch of his weight bearing back breaking, dictate the pitch of his weight bearing back breaking,
Alter the tone of your weight bearing back breaking, we can mend all the seams that were torn during our backs slowly breaking.
In the nervous light...
Track Name: Interview at the Ruins
Hide the petals underneath that bedroom floorboard
and they will wither without fail or success.
Put the people in the hollow box they crafted,
bolt the doors and watch them perish.
Its a cautious descent, so polite and pensive at first.
But the only truth is change, have patience
(every hundredth year, a single breath and then its over...)
Even if only for a minute for a minute its over.
Even if only for a minute.
So brave in the face of all those roots that ruin,
to stand so tall when in fact in ruins.
To face that corner of the box and dive in,
just the sound alone of its humble breath.
A murmur from the ruins echoes softly as the roots undo, and the branch becomes...
Track Name: Non Objective Portrait of Karma
Ignorance is bliss no wise woman's failed to mention
and surely some koan suggests 'neglect leads to perfection'
but the more I turn my face from the crowd
the more I feel my backs' increasingly compelled
for the sake of escape, to turn a knife on itself,
a knife of relief, from all the petty insight
and finally I'll sleep, I'll sleep through the night.
Bored as fuck on this street corner-cover.
study of a face in a figure. surveying this language as a game
surveilence of this language as the plague.
the dimension of persistence condemns.
This portrait of karma, crafted in accident
text book seduction, minus the text in the language of ghosts
and so we ran, like the wolves were biting,
the inhibitions of their prey kept them from screaming
"scratch my back and I will stab you in yours"
so I chose to live this life alone, without the teeth marks
but I predict, I'll have to sink my fangs in someone else's heart to heal my own.
just a victim's split, one part for the wolves, one part for you.
but I'll grow weary soon, weary of this fractal code,
wary of this hallway lined with ghosts.
just a scratch upon the skin, a drop of blood to let them in
their words will cause the sweetest fracture from a stone's throw
just a scratch upon the skin, a drop of blood to welcome them
parasitic, viral critics, or lovers, like spirits mingling in the mist
that we crafted, a starving jury, let them eat shit from our trembling hands.
The heat for heat's sake, on this Barnard block of Congress
deductively speaking, the polar of progress
well maybe I put too much faith in the accident
entranced, we danced toward the ripest display of escape
let the starving ghosts feats, from this flesh, from these bones,
let them all feast. In this chess game of language, forced to sit so I play all alone, watch the bathos drift forth like the petals from a wild crafted rose.
Track Name: Kill The Switch
Mouth the words to deny, deny the symptoms, as 'oh yeah I'm doing fine', as I've found a most endearing psychosis.
Somewhere out there there's a thrill I swear. Desperate as I am I just can't strip bare and bleed the only purity I've known.
But I lay with reason. Found logic concieved in a walk with skin. I lay with reason producing these monsters.
Under painted catcalls as in temptation. yeah there's a key to be in, but there's no shade, no shade to blame.
Waterfalls in a cool grey, and the struggle is colored grey this day. The caw of crows fills up the picture plane.
Our picture plane is veiled in central neutral grey. Absinthe to slight the pain. This world's this worst case color scheme.
Streaks of oil stain, stained the road he crawled on homeward.
Oh yeah, oh yeah he killed the switch with some unwieldy gauge, absence and light remain.
I lay with reason found logic and reap in a walk with sin. El sueno razon produce monstrous.
When does this dream end? Now I've missed another whole season,
I've missed the fall, clearly its fallen on this land as fields once green are ochre now.
This is no dream. Trees have turned to skeleton, roots teased and knotted just below the surface skin of ground.
Stitched between the earth and the sky struggling to hold it down.
Sometimes to realize you have to lose track of sight blurring my vision makes it clear the tiny moving parts make up the whole.
The image is clear, a tower is built of my own pride, I cry in the shade that if offers, the only shelter I've known.
When does this dream end? This is no dream. This is the walking living breathing caricature of a memory.
Shamelessly I cave in to temptation of creation. But still my only thrill is empty sidewalks, silent streets.
The caw of crows fills up the picture plane. This is your picture plain in central neutral grey.
This world's this worst case color scheme. Streaks of oil stain, stained the road he crawled on homeward.
Oh yeah, oh yeah he killed the switch with some unwieldy gauge, absence and light remain.
Life is lowly anonymity, in death a noble pose, a Marat David.
Tell me who wouldn't give their lives for such a soap box to die behind. Life is lowly, lowly anonymity.
In the space of a smile I found sleep. As in sorrow, so shall ye reap, as in reason so shall ye sleep.
Reap the promised end to the struggle. Reap every point on our linear path.
Reap the smiles in time we borrow, every harvest relies on the last.
Reap the promising song of the sparrow, that they learned from the birth of sea.
Silenced by the threnody of the crows. Reap the fallen fruit of the dogwood tree.
But I witnessed in all this silence one souls definition of beauty. a backlit smile so temporary.
A facade so rich with evil history. Cast in direct opposition set to overwhelm his moment to shine and sleep-
came out on top of what was borrowed, and found all that beauty to be still.
Every breath as in sorrow, reap the promised end to this path, by every image that we borrow, every harvest depends on the past.
Subdivide in factions our linear forever, we subdivide our waking hours to sleep.
While guilty eyes turn toward a porchlight, enlightenment is losing sight.
Somewhere out there there's a thrill I swear. In this low light town when my shift begins the streets reflecting yellow, yellow, yellow in the vacancy that overwhelms the red, red, red, your vehicle the color of expansion.
"Open up." the latter just a thought to thrill me "knock knock knock" the latter just a thought to thrill me.
"Red" is a four letter word. Four letter invitation. Now my head is locked in the direction of the sun...
Life is lowly anonymity, in death a noble prose, a Marat David.
Tell me who wouldn't give their lives for such a soap box to leave behind.
Life is lowly, lowly anonymity. I know its all been done before, I want to do it again. I want do it again.
Kill the switch.
This night our journey's through the dark.
Kill the switch, a welcome comatose, tonight we journey through the darkness.
As in sorrow, so shall ye weep, as in reason, so shall ye sleep.
Track Name: A Crater to Cough In
This path that we walk upon is the collection of points that the rain has drawn.
The rhythm section of the storm.
By the moonlight to the gateposts of the forest,
in the snow light, we are bound for the portal of the pines.
Grey as famine, on this path against our will by our main sails we're bound to the tempest until the sea is still.
Which compulsion with this miniature death tributize?
From behind the walls of my broken coughing tent, a formal vision,
but I allude to my helpless passion for the obtuse
When will this night end?
When the lightening finally tears through the mast of our sinking ship.
All the hopes of the slaves are betrayed by the grates.
On this coffin of a vessel every note's another breaking wave.
Revel in this vision, a formal visitation, on the night with the light from above.
Famished dogs follow slowly as my own paws drag me to a dock,
to the last plank where I struggle to deny myself the path that every Pisces craves,
just above the water in the middle of that man-made lake.
On that pier I turn my eyes from the water like a mirror of myself in the moonlight,
and I cough for every crater that I could see,
on the surface of that coffin we've come to call the moon.
Now I wonder if all those judgments that you made were true.
And the trapdoor of the solstice is thrown wide, wide open.
Let them all sink, let them all sink through.
The talking, the spinning of a web- its all just formal ritual.
The burning.
The burning question "what do you deserve?"
The gazing at a candle to find calm, but we all know its at the center of the storm.
Oh moon, though pluckest me out, oh moon-
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall and walked among the lowest of the dead
(to Carthage then I came).
Only the most sacred crater will suit my burial,
only the most sacred choir performs this ritual dirge.
Perfectly imperfect, like a storm.
By our mane dragged and bound to our grave by our mane,
to the grave dragged and bound to the tomb by the scavenger's tooth.