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Moral Injury: Songs For Children

by Jesus & The Robot

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1.
At The End Of The Day (The PTSD Song) It’s been five years since I’ve came back from, came back from Iraq and nearly three since our last album was pulled out of a hat. Not much has changed except incidents and medication and medication. I spent much of the time in-between records hanging out with depression. He’s been a friend of mine for about five years now, five years now. He encourages me to kill myself and he’s even willing to show me how but I got other friends who I kick it with, sorta, sorta, like my BFF, post traumatic stress disorder. We do everything together, she never leaves my side, she even keeps me up most of the night, most of the night. She’s got a hold of me, her caress is electric, is electric. Has me dreading life down to the end of every second. The PTSD is hectic, I’m spiraling out of control and depression is showing me what part of head to put the hole. So one day I could be free so I could put all this trauma behind me but at the end of day I got my friends depression and PTSD.
2.
When It’s All Said and Done (The TBI Song) Since my return from Iraq my brain just hasn’t worked the same could it be that multiple exposures to IED’s are to blame, huh? I never thought about that way, um, um., um. And I’m sure it didn’t help that I was a gunner on the trucks leading the convoy, getting thrown around the turret like some child’s toy back and forth, up and down. And for the fact that I pretty much did this for a year it’s really no wonder that my brain shuts down. Like taking off multiple fucking summers, gone on vacation, see you sometime. My EEG’s show abnormal activity in the frontal lobe region of my brain cavity. Now they want me for a week of intake monitoring, epilepsy hmmm, hmmmm, hmmmm. They say that I’m a victim of a traumatic brain injury but when it’s all said and done these moments will be memories or will they even be memories? Is a memory still a memory if you don’t remember it?
3.
Triggers (The Flashback Dance) Boom, boom, boom, boom a string of roadside bombs went off and blew your radio guys leg clean off. You are in a haze and you can’t hear a thing except a continuous ring. A car bomb can be quite the scare, it can also leave body parts everywhere. Death and destruction and bodies burning can ruin anybodies morning. Do do da do, da do do do do, shots are being fired from assault weapons, the bullets tear through chest, heads and abdomens, unfortunately at times innocent civilians. Mortars are falling from the sky, assuring that somebody at FOB camp so and so are going to die. Or then like me you’ll experience frequent headaches, have memory problems. Slow thinking, moving and speaking and reading and will be easily confused and overwhelmed. You’ll sleep much more or much, much less. Be irritated and quite angry or you’ll feel sad, anxious and tired all the time with impaired decision making. You used to be a squad leader, now you have trouble solving problems difficulty organizing tasks and sensitive to sound, lights and hmmmm, hmmmm, hmmmm. Fireworks and certain smells, backfiring cars can cause you some stress. Might as well put that Glock in your mouth and blow your fucking brains out.
4.
Moral Injury 03:14
Moral Injury So you’ve seen a lot of bad bad stuff. People dying, people dying. So you’ve seen some gruesome things, body parts everywhere. War can be ugly it can be rather scary, rather scary and can make you do some things, really bad things. Like open fire on civilians, civilians, putting holes through them. Like opening fire on civilians, killing lots of them. Sometimes in combat you gotta say goodbye to your buddy, your battle buddy because they never came back from convoy because they got blown the fuck up. When in theatre you may be given orders to do some things, some very naughty things. Like take souvenir from dead bodies, fingers and organs but you’re just a solider following orders from above, orders from above so when top tells you to shoot anything suspicious at all, you’d open fire on practically everything, everyone because all your briefings taught you to profile based on hate and fear. Now your deployment is full of blood, blood and guts on your hands. Blood and guts on your mind, blood and guts everywhere. Dead bodies here, dead bodies there, dead bodies everywhere. Some on fire, some burning or just missing limbs. So now you get to come home and settle back into life with all these images in your head, living in your head. You can try to shut them out with booze and self medicating but these demons catch up to you when least expecting. Like when you’re sleeping or driving or standing in line at the grocery store waiting to pay for your groceries. It’s bad enough that we get to come home with PTSD and TBI’s and in some cases sexual traumas but to top it off we got moral injuries, moral injuries, moral injuries. Seeing people everywhere with their organs on the outside.
5.
Jesus speaks before an audience and suggests that if the people really wanted to support the troops, they would care about bringing them home or at least speak up about the faulty equipment i.e. Kevlar but soon the crowd turns on Jesus and things get heated.
6.
Stupid Yellow Fucking Ribbon You say that you support the troops, you put the stickers on your car and even may have tied a stupid yellow ribbon around the tree in your front yard. Your heart bleeds a little when dead troops do make the headline status. So you turn to your facebook and encourage others to post prayers for the dead as their status. You copy and paste some words that tug on the heart strings. You are patriotic. You support the troops. If you support the troops you’d want to bring them home if that stupid fucking ribbon sticker on your car and truck meant anything at all, you would want these wars to end so the troops could come home you wouldn’t go day to day, year to year keeping your fucking mouth shut. I don’t want to be a patriot if it means condoning the death of service men and women, no, no, no. I don’t want to be an American if it means sitting on our hands and watching troops get killed so these corporations can make a killing.
7.
Welcome Home, Trooper The major made it clear during an out processing brief that it would behoove us to keep all treatment grievances hush if we wanted to leave so we checked all the boxes submitting that, submitting that we were fine because it we admitted to a problem we would be at risk to be left behind and after a year of this hell you’d be practically insane to not check whatever box they told you to as long as it got you on that plane. So I’m back home now and my past is finally catching up to me. I’ve got three years left on my contract and the better half of me wants nothing to do with me but we deploy again in another three months we’ll be back on that plane. I already got my bags packed I must indeed be insane so why is it that I’m just itching to get back? I guess I feel right at home. I guess I feel right at home in Iraq why do I feel that is home? Do do do do do do do do da do do do shoot me in the face, somebody stab me or slit my throat or dump my body in a river somewhere with a bunch of rocks in my pockets so I can sink to the bottom and be eaten by the fishies. Oh, life is so difficult to live in these days so I sit around and I think of ways to die that makes it okay like bathing with electrical appliances plugged in of course and don’t forget about running infant of trucks on the highway.
8.
Long Time, No See (A Veteran Homecoming) Welcome home trooper its nice to have you back, did you enjoy your extended deployment to Iraq? How was the weather? Did you see any dead bodies? Do you got any pictures? Did you kill anybody? Do you have PTSD or one of those TBI’s did you know that talk of WMD’s was just a bunch of lies but never mind all that because your home now so everything’s going to be okay. I just got Taxi To The Dark Side and Road To Guantanamo from my Netflix, my Netflix today. We could go to this bar I know where the alcohol flows and maybe after catch a firework show.
9.
Pups For Vets (Doggie Combat Patrol) Hi trooper, are you deployed in a combat zone and do you find yourself lonely and longing for company? You do! Well we at pumps for vets have the solution for you. You’ll issue you your very own puppy, a special little buddy to go on patrols with you so you won’t be so lonely while your kicking down doors, pumping bullets into people. Do you find yourself bored on convoys? Not anymore, not with your puppy companion riding shotgun with you. Keep your head in Sergeant Fido we wouldn’t want an IED to blow off your fucking head. Oh my doggie, oh my doggie, going on patrol with me. Where going to Sadr City, going to kick in some doors. Well, I’ll be the one doing the kicking and he’ll be there by my side and as I’m pumping bullets into people indiscriminately he’ll be wagging his tail. Good puppy, good little puppy, you won’t tell on me now would you? Of course you won’t because your loyal and what happens in Iraq stays in Iraq. Ha ha ha ha look at all those people I kill for no reason, lets go Sergeant Fido I gotta Greenie back in the humvee.
10.
What Is Them? What Is Me? How much of this sickness is me, am I better off medications? Or could it be that I am mentally ill and that I need these pills to balance my brain, I find myself asking who I was before the war? I often find myself wondering what I was before all of the psychiatric drugs. I need to know what is them? And what is me? What if I detox but I still feel worse like now I’m nauseous and my head is pounding. I feel like something is smothering me where I have trouble breathing and my thoughts are racing too fast, it’s really fucking exhausting. I need to know what is them and what is me? I’m afraid to find because I feel that I am running out of time. Is it the PTSD or is it the TBI? Is it the depression or the medication? What will it be? Will I ever find out?
11.
Flags Are Fire Hazards Flags are fire hazards, I wanna burn them all up. Let em burn, let em burn, let em burn all into the ground and then I will laugh, hardy har har ha ha ha. Giggle giggle, giggle giggle, as I do a little to celebrate my burning, my burning of your flag. I will laugh and have a shit eating grin across my face and then I will write down the way that I feel inside because come morning I won’t remember just how happy this made me.
12.
A suicidal call comes in at The Tender Hearts Suicide Hotline but the caller doesn't necessarily get talked down from the ledge, if you pick up what I'm putting down?

about

This album was recorded with the same hit record and lets see what happens philosophy so I had to go back and transcribe the lyrics. By the time of this album I had to leave my job at the head shop on Haight St, we had our first child who was born at home, technically at the recording studio. I also spent a week at the San Francisco Veteran Affairs hospital for a week long EEG to monitor my brain to see if my disassociating episodes were due to seizures. It turns out that I wasn't having seizures but my right frontal lobe and parietal lobe are damaged.

I do believe this is the ingredient that makes Jesus & The Robot as great as we are.

credits

released September 11, 2010

Recorded at 48th & Irving. San Francisco, California

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Jesus & The Robot Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

We decided collectively to form a super band and to take over the world by making catchy and undeniably beautiful songs about an assortment of things. We figured that it will only be a matter of time before the our music spreads like a deadly wildfire that wipes out much plantation and housing thus causing much ruin. ... more

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