‘Mass Destruction’ – Faithless, 2004
Second song off the British band Faithless 6th studio album and their first album to go to number one in the charts. This song joins a long list of anti-war / protest songs that have appeared in recent years. Although not a new theme in the music industry – think ‘Masters of War’ (Bob Dylan), ‘War’ (Edwin Starr) , ‘This Land Is Your Land’ (Woody Guthrie), ‘People Have The Power’ (Patti Smith), etc. They seem to be appearing more and more these last few years, especially since the whole Iraq invasion.
Most of the verses in the song tell the story of a father going to war and explaining this to the young son as he is putting him to bed, informing him that he has to go away and that he is the man of the house now.
“Son, I have the duty, calling on me
You and your sister be brave my little soldier
And don’t dare forget all I told ya
Your the mister of the house now remember this”
Continuing in the next verse, the boy struggles to understand the implications of his father going to war and the negative impact it’s having in his own young life. Whether he comes home or not, we never find out.
“I’ll defend my dad he’s the best of all men
and whatever he’s doing he’s doing the right thing.
It’s frightening, but it makes me mad,
Why do all of these people seem to hate my dad?”
The song is not all about the above story, the last verses are more generic in their content dealing with varying topics of protest and questioning the purpose and reasoning behind war. ‘Mass Destruction’ in these two verses and the chorus is more metaphoric in tone. All in all I think this is a really, really good song. Whether it stands the test of time like some better known ant-war/protest songs remains to be seen. Faithless performed a great acoustic version of this song on the radio station KCRW which can be found here. Also the official video of the song can be found on the band’s website. Flash is required.
