Jump to content

Songs with high body counts

spanky debrest

By spanky debrest,
in Music

 Share

Recommended Posts

spanky debrest

spanky debrest

Posted
Posted

Inspired by a post in the Long Song Thread (and not wishing to derail it) I'm after songs which detail mass-scale death. 

 

I guess that songs concerned with all-out war might well win as having the highest body counts - but those tend to be more poetic in nature, less concerned with cold details and stats.

 

Take that old Nick Cave record, the Murder Ballads one. I'm old enough to remember the video he shot with Kylie Minogue almost making it to No.1 on the pop chart but I never heard the album. I wonder how bloody that collection of songs really is.

 

One album that had profound impact on me as a youngster was a John Zorn record named after a form of Chinese medieval torture / slow execution ('Leng Tche'). It's 30 minutes of exquisite brutality but it represents only a single death - and it's abstract as well, so doesn't count here. 

 

One album I listened to a lot last summer stood that out for its punch-in-head low end, humour, and insane body count, with one song taking the biscuit - was Ganksta NIP's 'South Park Psycho'. Ostensibly a protest song about police brutality, Ganksta NIP's 'Slaughter' is an absurdist revenge fantasy like no other, and Mr NIP's preoccupation with exact numerical figures (something easily identified in the verses he wrote for Bushwick Bill's horrorcore tracks) makes counting the kicked buckets (fairly) straight forward. 

 

First off we're told via radio broadcast that Mr NIP's already started his rampage, with an estimated '26 crooked cops' killed on duty within the last hour. NIP grabs the mic and without further ado mentions that he dismembered and decapitated a cop for having 'slapped' his mum. Fair enough, let him off for that one. Next, NIP explains that he picks police off one by one, and that they'll find a 'cop hanging bloody with a nail in his throat'. 

 

Soon afterwards NIP calls for an ambulance (taking out his next victim whilst still on the line) before distilling the essence of the song with the following threat:

 

 

Quote

First cop I see, I'm breaking his knee, and then break inside his house and kill his whole fuckin' family

 

 

NIP doesn't skimp on the threats. He goes 'mad after dark' because, as he explains, bulletproof vests are pointless in his neighbourhood. Can't mess with that logic.

 

 

Quote

Nine-One-One - that means somebody dead, there'll be nine-hundred-and-eleven cops shot in they *[automatic gun fire]* fuckin' head

 

 

The next death we learn about is the Chief Of Police himself (found with a slit throat), before more threats emerge. These include the possibility of finding 'a closet full of cops with their heads cut off' (courtesy of NIP's equally psychotic DJ who will remain at large should NIP get apprehended), driving 'a train through the county jail', piercing ears with a knives reserved more commonly for butchery and warning female cops that he wouldn't go easy on them because of their gender. 

 

Next we learn that Ganksta NIP's government name is the kind a kid without any positive role models would name himself  - and that he's a real life video nasty (what with having suffered a very unusual birth and death). The killing promptly continues with NIP going mano a mano with cop and winning by tearing his opponents' face off with a hook.

 

 

Quote

I'm getting mean - oh fuck I'm get meaner - six-hundred dead cops stuffed in a vacuum cleaner

 

 

 

Quote

In five seconds cops is getting fried, Five, Four *[automatic gunfire........]* [pause]...I lied..

 

 

Next, more threats, dismemberment and shlock horror:

 

 

Quote

If I can't catch you don't sweat it, it's cool.....but you better walk your motherfuckin' kids to school

 

 

 

Quote

...Slap me, I'll grab your head and yank your motherfuckin' ears off

 

 

 

Quote

...Now this means war, catch a cop when he aint looking and piss in his car, when he comes running I'll act like I'm scared, when he ass gets close enough I'll jerk some scissors in his fuckin' head

 

 

At the time I logged 652 deaths (being careful not to confuse threats with confessions).

 

 

  

 

 

 

1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Garwoofoo

Garwoofoo

Posted
Posted
48 minutes ago, spanky debrest said:

Take that old Nick Cave record, the Murder Ballads one. I'm old enough to remember the video he shot with Kylie Minogue almost making it to No.1 on the pop chart but I never heard the album. I wonder how bloody that collection of songs really is.

 

It's pretty spectacular, and a great album too.

 

I could pick any song off the album really but here are the lyrics to O'Malley's Bar.

 

Spoiler
I am tall and I am thin
Of an enviable height
And I've been known to be quite handsome
In a certain angle and in certain light
Well I entered into O'Malley's
Said, "O'Malley I have a thirst"
O'Malley merely smiled at me
Said "You wouldn't be the first"
I knocked on the bar and pointed
To a bottle on the shelf
And as O'Malley poured me out a drink
I sniffed and crossed myself
My hand decided that the time was nigh
And for a moment it slipped from view
And when it returned, it fairly burned
With confidence anew
Well the thunder from my steely fist
Made all the glasses jangle
When I shot him, I was so handsome
It was the light, it was the angle
Huh! Hmmmmmm
"Neighbours!" I cried, "Friends!" I screamed
I banged my fist upon the bar
"I bear no grudge against you!"
And my dick felt long and hard
"I am the man for which no God waits
But for which the whole world yearns
I'm marked by darkness and by blood
And one thousand powder-burns"
Well, you know those fish with the swollen lips
That clean the ocean floor
When I looked at poor O'Malley's wife
That's exactly what I saw
I jammed the barrel under her chin
And her face looked raw and vicious
Her head it landed in the sink
With all the dirty dishes
Her little daughter Siobhan
Pulled beers from dusk till down
And amongst the townfolk she was a bit of a joke
But she pulled the best beer in town
I swooped magnificent upon her
As she sat shivering in her grief
Like the Madonna painted on the church-house wall
In whale's blood and banana leaf
Her throat it crumbled in my fist
And I spun heroically around
To see Caffrey rising from his seat
I shot that mother fucker down
Mmmmmmmmmm Yeah Yeah Yeah
"I have no free will", I sang
As I flew about the murder
Mrs. Richard Holmes, she screamed
You really should have heard her
I sang and I laughed, I howled and I wept
I panted like a pup
I blew a hole in Mrs. Richard Holmes
And her husband stupidly stood up
As he screamed, "You are an evil man"
And I paused a while to wonder
"If I have no free will then how can I
Be morally culpable, I wonder"
I shot Richard Holmes in the stomach
And gingerly he sat down
And he whispered weirdly, "No offense"
And then lay upon the ground
"None taken", I replied to him
To which he gave a little cough
With blazing wings I neatly aimed
And blew his head completely off
I've lived in this town for thirty years
And to no-one I am a stranger
And I put new bullets in my gun
Chamber upon chamber
And I turned my gun on the bird-like Mr. Brookes
I thought of Saint Francis and his sparrows
And as I shot down the youthful Richardson
It was St. Sebastian I thought of, and his arrows
Hhhhhhhhhh Mmmmmmmmmmmm
I said, "I want to introduce myself
And I am glad that all you came"
And I leapt upon the bar
And shouted out my name
Well Jerry Bellows, he hugged his stool
Closed his eyes and shrugged and laughed
And with an ashtray as big as a fucking really big brick
I split his head in half
His blood spilled across the bar
Like a steaming scarlet brook
And I knelt at it's edge on the counter
Wiped the tears away and looked
Well, the light in there was blinding
Full of God and ghosts of truth
I smiled at Henry Davenport
Who made an attempt to move
Well, from the position I was standing
The strangest thing I ever saw
The bullet entered through the top of his chest
And blew his bowels out on the floor
Well I floated down the counter
Showing no remorse
I shot a hole in Kathleen Carpenter
Recently divorced
But remorse i felt and remorse I had
It clung to every thing
From the raven's hair upon my head
To the feathers on my wings
Remorse sqeezed my hand in it's fradulent claw
With it's golden hairless chest
And I glided through the bodies
And killed the fat man Vincent West
Who sat quietly in his chair
A man become a child
And I raised the gun up to his head
Executioner-style
He made no attempt to resist
So fat and dull and lazy
"Did you know I lived in your street?" I said
And he looked at me as though I were crazy
"O", he said, "I had no idea"
And he grew as quiet as a mouse
And the roar of the pistol when it went off
Near blew that hat right off the house
Hmmmmmm Uh Uh
Well, I caught my eye in the mirror
And gave it a long and loving inspection
"There stands some kind of man", I roared
And there did, in the reflection
My hair combed back like a raven's wing
My muscles hard and tight
And curling from the business end of my gun
Was a query-mark of cordite
Well I spun to the left, I spun to the right
And I spun to the left again
"Fear me! Fear me! Fear me!"
But no one did cause they were dead
Huh! Hmmmmmmmmm
And then there were the police sirens wailing
And a bull-horn squelched and blared
"Drop your weapons and come out
With your hands held in the air"
Well, I checked the chamber of my gun
Saw I had one final bullet left
My hand, it looked almost human
As I raised it to my head
"Drop your weapon and come out!
Keep your hands above your head!"
I had one one long hard think about dying
And did exactly what they said
There must have been fifty cops out there
In a circle around O'Malley's bar
"Don't shoot", I cried, "I'm a man unarmed!"
So they put me in their car
And they sped me away from that terrible scene
And I glanced out of the window
Saw O'Malley's bar, saw the cops and the cars
And I started counting on my fingers
Aaaaaah One Aaaaaah Two Aaaaaah Three Aaaaaaah Four
O'Malley's bar O'Malley's bar

 

 

3
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Nick R

Nick R

Posted
Posted

Only three: Joan, Teacher, Judge. There are other characters but he doesn't kill them.

 

2 hours ago, spanky debrest said:

I guess that songs concerned with all-out war might well win as having the highest body counts - but those tend to be more poetic in nature, less concerned with cold details and stats

 

Like the Manic Street Preachers' Intense Humming of Evil: "six million screaming souls..." (One of two Holocaust songs on that cheerful little album!)

Link to comment
Share on other sites
rumblecat

rumblecat

Posted
Posted

Jim Carroll, People Who Died. It's only thirteen deaths but Jim knew 'em all. 

 

 


Teddy sniffing glue, he was twelve years old

Fell from the roof on East Two-nine

Cathy was eleven when she pulled the plug
On twenty-six reds and a bottle of wine
Bobby got leukaemia, fourteen years old
He looked like sixty-five when he died
He was a friend of mine etc etc... 
 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
jonathanhoey

jonathanhoey

Posted
Posted

How about this? 

 

 

 

Ex-Lover's Lover by Voltaire. All about bumping off his ex's new boyfriends in a variety of interesting ways. Not sure what the actual body count is but he does sing about piling them high to the sky, so presumably not just one or two. 

 

Or there's this:

 

 

 

Unlucky In Love by Clam Abuse (one of Ginger Wildheart's many side ventures). 

 

All about a woman whose boyfriends keep dying on her in a variety of interesting ways. Probably unrelated to the Voltaire song. 

2
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Charliemouse

Charliemouse

Posted
Posted
12 hours ago, Nayson said:

 

Six million. Back when the Manics were pretty fucking intense.

 

I first listened to that album at 3am in the dark all by myself.  It ranks as one of scariest moments of my life.

 

It's such an amazing album as well and towers over everything else they have ever done.

1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue. Use of this website is subject to our Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, and Guidelines.

  I accept