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The Lamb As Effigy

by Sprain

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aigamingx
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aigamingx It all started one curious night when Flenser YT channel dropped the opening track as a single, and I was intrigued ever since. This album not only became my AOTY last year, but I truly feel the parallels that can be drawn to 2010s Swans output doesn't take away what the band has created here. As for 90 minutes, I feel I'm getting so much out of it and then some. Repeat listens only confirm that as the chaos and beauty shine in new lights every time. Best of luck on the "Shearling" project! 10!! Favorite track: Man Proposes, God Disposes.
dead
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dead Thank you Sprain Favorite track: We Think So Ill of You.
noahiam
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noahiam best sprain god or whatever Favorite track: God, or Whatever You Call It.
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1.
It’s about control or lack thereof A twist of fate A change A reversal The ox turned butcher The slave turned master The band turned audience Cue the doe in headlights eye Response to roadkill diatribe Finally I am my own wind, ship, sails, and oar I will be your target I will stand here like an idiot with an apple on my head While you hurl response like some blasphemous arrow Thus a guilt most crushing A Sisyphean guilt A heart hidden beneath the floorboards guilt William Tell Tale Heart A post-ejaculation man upstairs watching guilt Wet potential smeared across your stomach guilt And it’s entirely your own guilt Lacking any description worthy To subsume in just simple words Is a disservice to the blank sensation of When the sky has its way with you And you burn up in the atmosphere All creation whispers in your ear “Blessed is the dog defecating on your lawn, grinning” Inhale, exhale etcetera Animals eat animals etcetera Animals fuck animals etcetera Do I have to spell it out for you? The words printed in super nova bold: “I am always riding these rotations around the sun I am always riding this pretty bow tied on top, so tight as to never come undone” The same joke twice but the second time louder An ocean of intellectual people laughing Sailing idiot waters forever While advertisements like nooses hang Covering up Man Proposes, God Disposes In preparation for a test taken in a play I’m always writing in my head And in it your character imagines Men hung up on meathooks in a butcher’s shop And eyed by oxen dressed in fur coats and leather hats Animals eat animals ad infinitum Cast in a starring role as flesh While everyone else you know plays motion Sparred details and generous skips to the good parts Signed by the sun with a wink and a thumbs up Dancing lucid in arachnid schemes With arachnid reputation proceeding So contrary to a familiar soft A grasp for sense where there is none Sense is a spark between us Sense is a cross armed glance and silent nod between us Both shackled and accessed by a constant waltz Of pushing air and wagging tongues The intimate marriage of sensation and response An exchange of jargon from one orifice to the next All my thoughts are “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” All my thoughts, every one And through this I admire the farce of control And my total lack of wind, ship, sails, and oar Every grip sustained on tangible artifact Is an amusing thought and nothing more
2.
Reiterations 06:42
This song is to ear as candiru is to cock The bland display elicits beige response Regurgitated talking points for a like-minded audience Ad nauseam Adopt a posture Imply aggression The moon still came out tonight I haven’t changed anything Candles all go out Breath abandons lung The waves still push and pull Still you haven’t changed anything The tired lines of us With ashen foreheads Remember you are dust And to dust you shall return Some cosmic satirist With space as page and stars as ink Kills off your character Still the inspiration drips Sit in a circle Naked and eager We all take turns pretending We say anything important Learn to tell the difference Between white noise and applause A universal eye roll And how we all tire of My masquerading As an “artist” The sun cares not for “art” It will rise and fall regardless There is no message of the profound In any top from which I spout A jargo- cum-monument built with self in mind Mosaic of erections rise in perfect sync with jurisdiction Or lack thereof The influence A serpent swallowing its tail An endless loop There is no old, young, in between Just flesh in constant state of change There is no reason for this song The impetus is blossomed on instinct’s pink, electric soil History is luxury A serpent swallowing its tail An endless loop After ______ years of eyes shut, stumbling There’s one thing I’ve come to understand How bought and sold you are How bought and sold I am With bland, adult geometry The self strung flaccid between two states suspended Each limb tied onto a different horse That which once showed me its bed Now shows me the door Foul jest in passing So stop me if you’ve heard this one: “My thoughts on faux expression For lack of a more eloquent term The capital speaks now In faked orgasm smirk” Save applause for the end A circle has none
3.
Here there’s not any plastic now Past the slightest flick of my brother’s tongue A snapshot of when the table melts There’ll be nothing left to prop you up To the detriment of all living things It is my vast repertoire of general shortcomings In the corner here where you hide your eyes And your face is red But no longer now Do I pity you
4.
I know nothing, that is the one thing I know The war is over and you have now ground Me into a fine dust An elegant sigh from you now Spark of the etcetera plus divine Indebted still, unto your flesh Empathy blooms Your moral gymnastics And lack of concern for all the drama Embedded between your legs We will be kept forevermore Invitations of comfort Where your tapestries of profanity are now spun A sin so great the stars themselves fall from the sky And I can hold it down upon the floor In a demonstration of my blunt power over you It’s just a thought don’t be alarmed You’re still decorated in my deepest affections Only, my cheeks are clenched oh so tight Are yours too? My cheeks are clenched oh so tight Are yours too? My cheeks are clenched oh so tight Now watch tusks curl back to my skull I know nothing
5.
My body constitutes my mother’s body Our flesh on a screen Decorated in the robes of a commercial mythology Our postures are a monument realized in marble I’m the object of interest and I can’t speak Cause my lips are sewn shut Reject the sensation There’s no longer a point in it Spread my legs wide Ash will seek ash My holy host to yours Stand between the sun and me All else is peripheral Upon my knees, your hands across my face I am where I need to be In the air, an ambassador of hyperbole Somehow bends us both into a functional display of love Now, now The idiots lay naked Embracing the commercial nude All too casual a gesture Time held stiff within each moment No matter which direction I walk I will hit ocean and find an end That’s my only contribution To surrender any implication that I have any understanding All too casual a gesture And the sun explodes anonymously And when it does, what would have changed? All too casual a gesture All too casually the whole world bends At a geometry of homage for you Make horses see scorpions Make horses see scorpions Tear all these walls down What am I now if not my failures? Press them onto wax They are yours now They are yours In an act of courtesy on your behalf You place a hand upon me You place your hand over my eyes And read the braille of my quivers And now you have rearranged me as you please In a bronze posture of confession And you’ve hung a bruise on the ray of sunshine That shakes us both awake in the morning How good it must feel to sit upon that throne As the rest of us dream of washing your flesh Somewhere, I know, you are carving my name into a stone A recording, a ticking time bomb As I try I will try I will try I will try to forget this I will try I am nothing if I am not on my knees I am nothing if I am not on my knees
6.
Irony of the situation’s curtains drawn The audience knows Proud of all the clever ways I’ve engineered to put you down A quick glance at your Marilyn thighs Morse code as they will rub together reads: “This turn the other cheek approach bitch slaps you beyond repair” And I don’t see a difference between that and the words that I choose I’m not sure there’s any realistic difference between that and the words that I choose And I’m repeating the word idiot to myself Until it loses its meaning Yes I am repeating the word idiot to myself Until it loses its touch I just like the way it sounds You better shut your mouth or you’ll wake up the neighbors Concerns my flesh’s current union with yours “I love myself,” you’ll say it over and over Till you run out of air, pass out, start again The infinite math of the situation Subtract your apprehensive hips And divide: “Every time I pray to _______, I keep on killing mosquitos” All the while I am repeating the word idiot to myself Until it loses its meaning This is my Spade Cooley bit My Ronald Reagan pardon A cigarette on each nipple And “I’ve got a feeling this is the first day of the rest of my life” Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!
7.
The Lamb as effigy sighs “I can’t believe it! All my birthdays, thoughts, and ass burnt to ashes! The critique does not exclude me! I’ve become the anathema!” Intimately wed to concept over practice The joke goes over my head but I am still laughing at it In the interest of impressions The winking bit of your balancing act Makes a fool of my wire affairs They all see my hand in my pants Point and laugh at idle steers As if the flies don’t, on us too, land Flesh is flesh And you are speaking to me and I am nodding my head I have so carefully adorned value upon the space between us Something peeping toms the words To hang a price tag on our interactions And you just killed me off in the film that you’re directing And we both smile and nod as I achieve erection I survived the initial crash But was smothered by the airbag Point and laugh at idle steers As if the flies don’t, on us too, land Flesh is flesh A picture painted in my mind of you reclining nude With obscured intentions Set in bronze Imagine this: I’m the guest on some obscene talk show In a cell of moral compromise The audience is made up of everyone that I have ever met in my entire life Every sin I’ve ever committed is put up on display by screens hung around the stage And we watch The host says “I now present to you an elaborate choreography of failure!” The audience erupts with seemingly coordinated jets of jargon laughter Ha Ha Ha! “Shame on you!”
8.
These first two drafts rejected with a single written critique: “It is rapturous still, the way you fill a page. I find it to be lacking.” In clash of celebrity and landfill My depressing little you-know-what-at-this-point is pointing down In the phenomenon of event and object and the miracle of their description It’s still pointing down I’ll fashion a new monument Out of my imitation of mammal curves And set that sun for us Shame constructed all my morals While passersby all bid on the Lamb as effigy Humiliation is the blueprint of my morals While passersby all bid on the Lamb as effigy It is rapturous still the way I empty my mouth Stillborn ideas plus fertile hips Maternal Lamb belly All eyes were on her breast reduction rosary Lamb struts these contractual obligations With the former vernacular shame embedded You can’t force a needle Apple, pear, hourglass Hourglass, apple, pear But I’ve got a concept for our nativity Assume the position Black lace on a pale ass And you turn around and smile We both make it red with ten million spankings Soft white snow onto which the Lamb is bled I imagine my conversation with the Lamb to go like this: “Hello, how have you been?” “I have been well, and yourself?” “I’ve been well too. Thank you for coming.” “What nice weather we are having.” “I hope you continue to be well.” “I hope the same for you.” My conversation with the Lamb went a bit more like this: “Would you not take me into your divine consideration?” “_________________________________________________________” “Would you not be gentle in your examination?” “_________________________________________________________” “Would you not have me sing you softly to sleep?”' I can’t sing if you’re looking at me *Lamb Sings*

about

The Lamb As Effigy

or

Three Hundred And Fifty XOXOXOS For A Spark Union With My Darling Divine

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released September 1, 2023

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Sprain Los Angeles, California

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