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Hidden Histories

by Arroyo Deathmatch

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1.
Finding Excuses to Be Alone The very air is a cage, liberate your blood from your veins, look close you’ll find a chain, steel or flesh it’s the same. when your addiction gets up and follows you around, when it leaves your room and stands behind you on the street, when it pulls your eyes away from those you want to meet, it’ll be the lover for whom any lies you’d gladly speak. A complete break from what I’ve been taught, the only thing I’ve been so far is what I’m not, it’s like I don’t even have the tools to see, a part of any of this that could possibly be me. she looked in the mirror and it was a camera, images were captured to placate a captive, they told lies about the nature of her desire, it told the truth about me, lies told the truth about me. Mom, is it okay if I come to see you, it’s been months and I’m scared of what I might become. Give up your connection to others, for a moment of escape from a life, I won’t lift one finger to change, I’m rotting away
2.
Casting Into the Void Casting into the void like spellcasters standing at the edge of an abyss, reaching out for you but you can’t see because even light can’t make the trip, lost to sound, our mouths move futily like suffocating fish, and yet somehow I know you’re there forever separate but you’re missed. Though we are constrained by others in the dark to reach another is my greatest wish, and if there was something we could both share together I’d smash it with a brick, so you could know that I was there, some small violent signal I could give, because our inability to share our consciousness for even a moment isolates us as we live. Why can’t you hold on to me, I miss your smell, but you I couldn’t reach so I guess it’s just as well. How can someone feel so close and then be so far away? This is not the first time I’ve thought of you and touched myself today.
3.
4.
A Language that Goes Unspoken Baptized in smoke, in freedom we choke, I’m lost in my room, I’m lost in my room. Watching my breath in the cold dark I saw and yearned for the song of a beautiful night bird, yearning is driven by mystery and all is unknown for the duration of pleasurable suffering, the sensation of swelling and crashing against the inside of my chest like a breeze against a stand of pines, losing yourself amid novelty of every exceptional limited moment as it comes to you. There is within me a language that goes unspoken, unbroken, going back from me now to the first person I was. Tell me how is it fixed, when its very viewing distorts and changes us all. I mount one last day, and am made new again. I watch one last desperate thrust and am remade half again. Inside the loss of the everyday is a fulfillment infinity, raging inside of me. A language that goes unspoken. I want to do more than survive, when you can’t get out of bed you can be unmade, I can’t believe this is what I’ve become. I lay in bed and dream of death all day, she asked me what my favorite fantasy of death was, I told her any one that you can’t get up from. my sexuality became nestled inbetween fire, and death, and control. mechanized by visions of abuse and exploitation I just want my desire to be my own instead it’s the cold hand in my hand driving a wedge between me and those I love so put an ex on my hands and I’ll wallow in my addiction fear put a leash on me long ago. Make no mistake. Something tearing itself apart is not romantic or ideal. Be it a person, a couple, a friendship, a scene, a community, or a forest. It is, however, necessary. It is also an inalienable aspect of what it means to be anything. We can’t be separated from the fire. Nor should we be. A flame in every pinecone, in every heart, in every bone, in every project. It’s not like a passion that burns, but an inevitable part of being alive.
5.
6.
Apex Tragedy 04:46
Apex Tragedy They need order to organize your death, orchestrating the mass killing of another sect, the 20th century is filled with such acts, but all were carried out by governments. State monopoly on, violence and apathy cause, poverty and property endlessly. The rise of nation states, has primarily given way, to organized suffering and loss of 1 in 25. So many deaths were required, that guns weren’t fast enough, and so heads were pulled off with little more than wire. The blood ran in the streets, as power preserved itself, hundreds of millions sacrificed for the idea of safety. Add it up, Add it up, Divide by Divide by The number of people, born for a hundred years, divide by 1 in 25 1 in 25 lost their lives. to crowns and flags.
7.
Kindred Malady Lighter than air when we’re hot, falling when the fuel is all gone, I’m finding it harder and harder, to pick myself up, and see myself in someone other than you. Every piece might not burn the same, but they end up the equal when they’re through, twined through the process of the flame, the charcoal piece that is me is in you. Giving ashes to the wind, bleeding, urn begins to spin, press your trembling hands against the wound. we have shared the darkest room. We’ve been burning, at the same time, we’ve been burning, we’re the same kind, and it’s the fire that defines our minds.
8.
9.
Haruspex 03:36
Haruspex I have made incisions from stomach to sternum, severed living heads, I have watched blood drip from eyes, I have broken necks. I have shot lead into bodies, seen torn and ragged flesh, felt both cold and warm blood on my hands, and wondered if I was next. I have exposed sacks of organs, cut open stomachs to see inside, I have taken so many and I still don’t, know what it means to be alive. So you who use the logic a corporation uses, to decide what commercials to run, think you can make assertions, based on sex or based on blood. I have lived this life before you, this life I am inside, and if you try to tell me who I am, I will stop you every time. The color my skin, the genitals I was born with, the jobs my parents held. If you try to tell me who I am, I will stop you every time.  
10.
Watch Out 03:53
Watch out! Watch them hate watch them hate, and abuse the position this power structure creates. One side, watch them kill watch them kill, because protection of property is the corporate will. Fight back, take the streets take the streets, and watch allies turn on you like they work for police. I’m sick, from another kid dead, and how we can’t win against the cops in our heads. Dark or not, your blood runs cold. The police are here, and they’re going to hurt your friends with all they have. They kill, they can’t stop, they can’t stop, because fatal violence is part of the job, Scream out, end the silence the silence, police are a manifestation of state sponsored violence. Under siege by killer cops. “…and I have fought against the crime, and I have fought and I have sacrificed myself even to eliminate the crimes that the law and the church legitimate and sanctify.” -Excerpted from the Last Statement of Bartolomeo Vanzetti, 1929
11.
Hidden Histories The aesthetic was neglect, yet we marveled at the fact that the house got wrecked, that the good bands broke up, that good friends died doped up, we said “that’s life” while our hands turned the wheel, together making a world we said felt unreal. Mouthing the words, making sounds till you can’t anymore, it would be funny if it weren’t so sad, and laughing doesn’t get you any closer to telling the jokes. Fumbling for pills again, like you fumble toward climax, they shake in your hand, gone again in a rush, avoiding pain. Knowing stopped being enough, I have it all in my head, I scream it out every night. Your mouth has blood in it, meaning is never found, I’m willing to die but there is no fight. I want to be an old shack in the desert, torn apart by neglect and filling with dust, a dry heat inside, insulation hanging off of the walls, concrete cracking, mummified spider bodies perched in webs that never see the light. You kill yourself in pieces.

about

Arroyo Deathmatch is
Alexster: uke, vox
Beth: flute, vox
Jett: washboard, vox
Matt: accordion, bejota
Leon: drums
Cameron: grandjo

credits

released June 5, 2015

Recorded at the Wagon Wheel in Albuquerque, New Mexico
Engineered by Beth Hansen, Alexster Denbaars, Leon Arnold
Mixed by Beth Hansen
Mastered by Andrew Eckel
Album art by Beth Hansen

Arroyo Deathmatch is incredibly grateful to so many of the amazing people we have encountered in our journey as a band. Thank you Callan for putting up with late night practices and endless shows at the Wagon Wheel and also for Devil’s Nuts. Thank you Fish for helping us get this album and summer tour together as well as helping to give the album a cohesive artistic direction. Thank you to the people who helped fund and maintain the Goathead Record Collective equipment, without which we would not have been able to record this album. Thank you do Becky and John as well as Matt’s Dad for their immense help with fixing the transmission on our tour van. Thank you to Riff-Raff for the sound engineering advice. Thank you to the Immortal Andrew Eckel for mastering the project on short notice.

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Arroyo Deathmatch Albuquerque, New Mexico

evil folk for evil folks

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