Fittingly, the last song on Billy Talent’s first album is also the last one I cover from it on the blog. Makes it another full LP of tracks that I’ve covered. We’re getting to that time where this may be happening more than usual. I think I covered why I liked the band’s debut so much the last time I wrote about a number from it. Straight-up lightning in a bottle captured on the record, the band were never that furious again. And the songs still hold up today just as much as they did when I played the CD through once I got it for a gift in December 2006. I had been obsessed with the band for more than a year up to that point, though and was already familiar with almost all the tracks on the album. The singles had their music videos up on the band’s website. ‘Line & Sinker’ and ‘Standing in the Rain’ were able to be heard in full on their website. Some I heard in full on the LAUNCHcast radio service. Others I had to make do with 30-second samples on artistdirect.com that I’d listen to on repeat. No matter how much I waited for a sudden appearance on the radio station, ‘Voices of Violence’ never showed up. Except for one time when I was on the toilet. It was tragic hearing the song play through the computer speakers while I was doing business of some kind. And of course the song was done just as I finished.

The 30-sec sample I heard from ‘Voices of Violence’ always got me excited. Left me really wanting to know how the full thing went. From what I recall, it faded in at the guitar riff before the “Go rake the leaves off your grass” lyric and got the whole first chorus in, before fading just as the second verse began. It was such a tease. I’ve said all I’ve had to say about Ian D’Sa’s guitar playing in nearly every Billy Talent post. I’m thinking in particular the aforementioned riff requires some dexterity on the fretboard hand to pull off. I liked how in between the guitar stabs during the verse, bass guitarist Jon Gallant plays an extra note that filled in what would be the silences. Then there was the chorus, a back and forth where D’Sa sings “We’ll take it back”, Ben Kowalewicz retorts, screaming “Broken dagger, Southern swagger”, finishing with both of them singing the track’s title, Kowalewicz elongating the ‘ence’ syllable in ‘violence’. Months were spent listening to that sample. It felt so good to have the track in my heads officially on a physical copy after all that time. The track caps the album off with a fiery end. Plus, it comes as a surely intentional pick-me-up after ‘Nothing to Lose’. Couldn’t have ended things that way, it would have just been too sad.

To put it in simply, the track’s anti-George Bush and telling the listener to do something to change how things are in the society they were in, not to procrastinate, to be active, to stand up and fight what what they believe in. The US were in a war, a lot of people didn’t want it to be happening. It was a very trying time in those early 2000s. Things are made clear from the very start, “Don’t wait for a knight in shining armour / Your savior’s reflected in the mirror.” Like, you’re the hero in this story, no one’s going to save you. “These flowers have grown from blood stains on the ground”. Graves, death. “We’ll take it back / Voices of violence”. A reference to protestors, I’m thinking. And “Even after I’m dead and buried, I’ll still remember”, I guess is saying “The things you’ve done are so abhorrent that I’ll never be able to forget about it even when I’m dead.” A big “you suck” song calling for vengeance, retribution, vengeance. Other synonyms. Kowalewicz’s “come back fighting” scream into the last chorus, goosebumps every time. An angry, angry song, but I wouldn’t want it any other way.

And that’s ‘U’ & ‘V’ done. Went by relatively quickly. Stay tuned for the ‘W’ series. It will go on longer than these two combined.