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Die Like Trotsky (Iceaxe to the Skull)

from The Best of​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​Hard Rockers by Walter Ehresman

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--from the Walter Ehresman album "Monkey Paw Situation" ('09).

Download the whole album here: walterehresman.bandcamp.com/album/monkey-paw-situation


This track was a rarity in the Ehresman discography prior to its inclusion on the "Monkey Paw Situation" album back in 2009. The song was originally released on a limited edition Monkey Boy Records SXSW Sampler in 2005. The lyrics were started back in the 1990s, with the title referencing the ignominious demise of the Russian revolutionary in his Mexico City exile. A short, violent metal/punk/techno freight train, the song gives a litany of the world’s spoilers (predatory mega-corporation CEOs; hypocritical misery-dealing religious leaders; polluters and general death-dealers) who should, the song posits, meet the fate of Mr. Trotsky. The tortured vocals were recorded by running the microphone and the guitar through the “Tazmanian” effect on the DigiTech GuitarTalker. As Ehresman remembers it, “I had these lyrics around for many years, but had never felt I had the right musical approach that would be violent enough to do them justice…..but my friend Kurtis, who owns the punk rock record company Monkey Boy Records and the affiliated Million Dollar Sound recording studio, and I decided to do some recording and he brought in the other guitarist, Rigo Perez, from his band at time (Los Platos)…..I programmed the basic rhythm track on the groove box, and we recorded the whole thing over at Million Dollar Sound…..Kurtis played the pulsing keyboard bass part, Rigo played a rhythm guitar track, and I played rhythm and lead guitars and electric solidbody bouzouki, and did the GuitarTalker lead vocals…with all of us overdubbing the background vocals late one twisted night…..there may have been a case of Pabst involved….Now that’s punk rock!” The recording was produced by Jaime Estrada (who had mastered the first Snipe Hunt album), assisted by Ehresman. The pie’ce de re’sistance, as Ehresman recalls it, was the sample at the very end of the song: “We wanted the sound of the titular iceaxe to the skull, but several Halloween sound effects CDs didn’t quite have it…..Finally, we created it by splicing together two different recordings of pumpkins being squashed….I think it came out quite well,” he says innocently.

lyrics

Die Like Trotsky (Iceaxe to the Skull)
(© 2004 Walter Ehresman)

To those who would foul the water; To those who would foul the air;
To those who build prisons for “the unborn” who never should have been there.
To those of you who smile while lying; To those of you who must deny;
To those of you who bring slow death to children from your gentry box in the sky.

[chorus]
Die like Trotsky! Die like Trotsky!

To those who spew all their poisons with a sneer but never a blink;
To rich old men and their hateful spawn who have taken us all to the brink.
And you who look to the heavens–condemning those down below;
And you in your palace with your big golden hat, stuffing guilt into the sausage of soul.

And you with your need for believing, but no backbone to do it alone;
And your bovine mind chews its cowardice cud, so the rest have a choice between one.

[chorus]
[solo]

To those of you I won’t remember; To those of you I can’t forget;
To those that we should have axed long ago, and to the users who aren’t born yet!--

[chorus, twice]

credits

from The Best of​.​.​.​.​.​.​.​Hard Rockers, released May 1, 2017
Walter Ehresman: lead & GuitarTalker vocals, lead & rhythm electric guitars, electric solidbody bouzouki, sampling. Kurtis Machler: keyboards, drum machine programming, background vocals. Rigo Perez--rhythm guitar, background vocals.

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Walter Ehresman San Miguel De Allende, Mexico

Called "the quintessential Austin DIY artist" by famed local disc jockey Charlie Martin , Walter Ehresman was an eccentric presence in the Austin music scene from the '80s until his 2015 move to Mexico. A prolific songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and recording artist...and a restless musical spirit, always looking for something new, expressed with fearlessly honest, socially-conscious lyrics. ... more

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