The band was founded in 1992. Rather than taking the normal route of releasing Demos, DA instead recorded a multitude of limited edition split albums, though rehearsal tapes and demos were released later on various compilation sets. Some of these have such poor sound quality that they just sound like blasts of noise, whereas later releases like The Inalienable Dreamless have very clear production which revealed the complexity of the guitar riffs.
They split up in 2003 when guitarist Rob Marton developed tinnitus from standing too close to the amp during rehearsals and live shows. They gained somewhat of a cult status post-split, and are renowned as one of the foremost art-grind bands.
The band was notable both for having no bassist and for packaging most of their full-length releases in DVD cases rather than standard CD cases, presumably to accommodate the unusually large booklets (normally with liner notes for each song longer than the lyrics).
Ulterior
Discordance Axis Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Drowning in air with a propped up smile
Consigned to the enclosure of a formal life
To our thought all manner to deprive
Conceded to a selfish dream
The ceaseless senselessness of the lemming procession
In touch with the consensual avarice
Dolled eyes rejoice in illusions
The lyrics of Discordance Axis' song Ulterior deal with themes of conformity and the dangers of following the herd mentality. The opening lines, "Playing dead with earnest, lend to the sigh / Drowning in air with a propped-up smile," paint a picture of someone who is going through the motions of life, but is not truly alive. They are trying to fit in and be accepted by society, but at the same time, their individuality is being stifled.
The line "Consigned to the enclosure of a formal life" speaks to the idea that we are born into a certain set of expectations and responsibilities that are dictated by society. These expectations can be limiting and prevent us from truly living our lives on our terms. The lyrics suggest that we have to fight against this conformity and not relinquish our freedom of thought.
The chorus of the song delivers a warning about the dangers of herd mentality and the harm it can cause. The "ceaseless senselessness of the lemming procession" refers to the mindless way in which people can blindly follow one another without any thought or consideration. This is compounded by the "consensual avarice" that people are in touch with - meaning the shared greed which often overtakes individuals in large groups. The last lines, "Dolled eyes rejoice in illusions," suggest that those who follow the herd are living in a fantasy world that is far from reality.
Line by Line Meaning
Playing dead with earnest, lend to the sigh
Faking emotions sincerely while expressing a deep breath
Drowning in air with a propped up smile
Being engulfed in nothingness while pretending to be happy
Consigned to the enclosure of a formal life
Trapped in the limitations of a strict, regulated existence
To our thought all manner to deprive
Through our thinking, we restrict ourselves from all possibilities
Conceded to a selfish dream
Giving in to a self-centered, personal desire
The ceaseless senselessness of the lemming procession
The never-ending foolishness of following the crowd without question
Redoubled deception, extending outwards
Repeated lies that spread further and further
In touch with the consensual avarice
Connected with the agreement of greed
Dolled eyes rejoice in illusions
Eyes wide open, but only seeing phony happiness
Contributed by Maya K. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
Chalice Of Blood
Side A
1. Dominion 01:41 Hide lyrics
Provisioning drain
Circuitry of extraction
Trapped in cancer
Obsessed illusion
Rapacity of carnage exceeds tolerance
Thoughtless abuse practiced rape
Supervised extraction suits voracious interests
That sap the blood from the Earth's heart
The spine of a prolonged delusion
We are controlled by unseen terror
2. Killing Yield 00:44 Hide lyrics
Harvest the killing yield.
Harvest a, killing yield
From a side effect of this enterprise
Meddlesome collide, with peripheral culture
With garish stares and hard boiled eyes
Sharpening the barbs of a disruptive ambience
Blind, gagged, coiled behind the mask
Construct to foster, capitalist priority
Through colonial encroachment
All too unaware at a vision dead point
Heavy capital infect
IMF manipulating
The information dragnet
3. Heavy Water 01:07 Hide lyrics
Detailed arcs, rout individual
Doted topography a pronounced disillusion
Coherent area, alienation
And they dynamics of living a lie.
Omniscient turbines grinding
Analytical glare of anti-glee
Refined into asbestos
Introduced to preempt wonder.
Captured in this circle - composition
Stooped by patently ulterior cares
The hushed quiver, of a semi-life
As the machine rolls on
4. Mind Seduction Aftermath 00:39 Hide lyrics
Follow in step into line after line
In accordance with what's required
Assigned mantelpiece, designated function
Memory pulped into the assimilation spider web
Assimilation spider web
Mind seduction aftermath
Your identity has been seduced
And quickly quieted.
5. Walls 00:09 Hide lyrics
Invisible manipulation access direct
Lodged in the lens of television screens
Suspended in virtual breeze is the screaming of ghosts
Marble goldfish exercise control
6. Ruin Trajectory 01:32 Hide lyrics
Backfilled trenches bury cancer intensive dreams
In razor wire orchards and bar code reefs
(Where) Primary extinction communicates its intent
On a
Trajectory of
Ruin
Acrid
Stock
Chokes
The Ground
Renewed
Concern
For the strontium 90 offspring
Boiling dust stands in pools of molten glass
Severe contamination of irradiated dreams
Nuclear reservations and burial gardens
Alpha particles stir in the poison breeze
Planting yellow posts
In the sand
The trail markers of irradiated dreams
Trapped in senseless illusions
Compressed to a state
Of critical mass
7. Dystopia Part II 00:02 Hide lyrics
Dystopia
8. Cat's Cradle 00:55 Hide lyrics
Faces pillaged of expression
Homogeneous nuclear family units
Holed up in external as public eye sees fit
Vaccinated against free will
Self-deluded by our nature
Or the blank scope of ourselves?
Screening decisions-integrity cremated
Chaperoned orientation to fiscal
Better homes and gardens or killing fields
A deeper sense of nothing, of alienation.
Negotiate self as target
Of assimilation
Controllability of linear people
Autistic configuration of a cohesive identity
Inarticulate posture
Only serves to undermine self-determination
9. Wheels Within Wheels 00:40 Hide lyrics
A narrow formation in lobotomized rhythm
Sits like a knife edge at my mind
Riding with gunhed overdrive to zero
Mind setting like flowers in concrete
10. Human Collateral 00:34 Hide lyrics
Lease our lives, to misplaced hopes
The treason of assiduity harkened by the whip crack
Cruising the ruins of regret
In zones of silence where time stands still
Scourged and twisted, relentless constraint
Absurd capitulation on the estrangement index
11. Mimetic 00:49 Hide lyrics
Hardware of slavery, treadmill of dogma
A realization of the Orwellian dream
Among the blind and under scrutiny
Adjuncts figment as auspicious
Sense the omnipotence of function
Restless whims of mechanistic affairs
Laid to waste by regulated proxy
From a subordinated perspective
Dubious problems from which disillusion projects
Obstruction
Collage
Being
Occluded
12. Euphoria Dejection 00:31 Hide lyrics
Insulated
Like a metronome
Debriefed at length
By a steady diet of amphetamines
(random screaming)
Downward well
Of social compression
Self contained lie
Of upward social mobility
Persecuted labor surrogate
Sprinkle me with lime
A mundane euthanasia
Side B
13. Lathe 00:48 Hide lyrics
Barely perceived through somnambulity
Kinetic vacuum distorts observance
Air tight cages of the multiplex
Deadening empty happiness
Insecurity conditioning disguised
As the usual advertising
Dazed eyes wander casually
Spatial atrophy
Memory dump file
Dazed rambling in synchronicity
Barely perceived through somnambulity
Kinetic vacuum distorts observance
Air tight cages of the multiplex
Deadening empty happiness
14. Torn 00:44 Hide lyrics
Wisdom has become clouded pumped with the bile
Of this insular trash culture
Dead state laying awake
Gorging on the boundless
Dead state laying awake
Inculcating life as bound
Lethargic conscious being
Gorging on the boundless
Captives of envy to possess the material icons
A subtly created prison with no...walls.
Ravenous synergy of time held circles
Of imperical dimensions
Blind, torn, ruptured and broken
Enslaved by the tyranny of suspicion.
15. Empire 00:20 Hide lyrics
Gluttonized foundation
Well versed in the art of slavery
Patrons of feudal interest
Scurry around a concrete beehive
Crazed civilization frantically going nowhere.
16. Amnesia Ceiling 00:43 Hide lyrics
Cherish insanity, digression grinding
The cogwheels of a cool eloquence lined with an undimensional joy
Amusing ourselves to death
Before reclaiming a lifeless life
Subscribe to whose iconisms
Rallied into a closed circuit
Of dreams turned sour and then turned on themselves
Exotic variations (of nothing)
Can't think beyond conditioning
Now stand at the end of life.
The broken promise of wasted activity
Endure this world without end in total silence.
17. Harmony Battery 00:33 Hide lyrics
Rigidly perpetuated unawares
Inherent abuse takes shape
Submitted for strategic
Rape
Trace the steps of contentedness with empty traditions
So called alternative is nothing but more of the same
Possessive nature of the mutual farce that is harmony battery
Denounce our repression or save face?
18. Ulterior 00:49 Hide lyrics
Playing dead with earnest, lend to the sigh
Drowning in air with a propped up smile
Consigned to the enclosure of a formal life
To our thought all manner to deprive
Conceded to a selfish dream
The ceaseless senselessness of the lemming procession
Redoubled deception, extending outwards
In touch with the consensual avarice
Dolled eyes rejoice in illusions
19. One Dimensional 00:22 Hide lyrics
Giving rise to self delusion
A blueprint for volition deferred
Punctuated sense left defused...raped
Casual abuse remains unchallenged
In any form but words
Words that expressions of token gesture.
Ritual blanket of grey, spouting a fixed lie.
20. Driver's Side Air Bag 00:20 Hide lyrics
Uncanny nil frames an illegal soul
Existing in a pocket in which creativity is drained
Through marketable deployment and planned obsolescence
Manufacture according to the latest trends
Sensationalize and infest
Sterile faculties of capitalist incentives
Of statistics and profit figures, of rivets and slag
Scratch the surface of a liberation virtual and unreal
A counter culture the raw material
For its decimation
21. Presence 00:38 Hide lyrics
A deep inside nothing
Of a null and void preview
Swollen with the emptiness
Of distorted fulfillment excess
Oblivious senses
Building up the starry eyed nation.
User friendly genocide, tailored to an existential suffering
Strip mining, our souls and beings.
Integrity of expression, sacrificed as an obstruction to sales
Thoughtless short sighted gains, outweigh creativity
22. Appleseed 01:37 Hide lyrics
Free thought has been hollowed
Furnished with myopia
Spin drift misconception
Inducements stagnate
Appleseed.
Life inside an envelope
Built on lie after lie
From complex layer of illusion
Can you recover your soul?
Choking down expressions of homage
Reshaped desires prosecute attrition rate
Slotted into a life of graft
Defining said contours, through make-work production
Processed stimulation in their ten thousand mile stares
The sour taste of a mouth full of ashes, disordered introspection
Head is in the sand
While subdued integrity, surpasses recognition
Perspicacious dreams of liberation remain illusions.
23. Delusion Envelope 00:55 Hide lyrics
Spiced with, the vacuity
Of inertia, unstirred
Undercurrent disorder
Perceive the same
Anxious drones carry out virus sorties
Unable to fracture displacement from our minds
Mind fuck sift repeats itself
Drawn to bleached definitions of gender, semiotics and race
A preset, unconscious
Sealed into, a vicious circle
Incapable of receding
Indentured precedence
Mistook to select, the true means of freedom
Instead breathing in deeply, from this vacuum
Brewing complacency in the delusion envelope
Retained in the bereft lobe of alienation
Harmony gouged out until depleted
Inevitable breakdown, of automated life.
crazycookie9000
You know, I have never been a fan of this kind of music before, I just didn't understand the appeal. But I kinda get it now. I've been really stressed out lately, and hearing people just let out their unconstrained pain and rage is strangely is strangely therapeutic. Rock on everybody, and I hope you all are doing well.
Digital Cthulhu
It's an acquired taste.
Ian Henderson
I got into it by being into old style hardcore and asked to.join a grind band cause i liked to play fast. Never entirely got it until I started playing it.
Míkal A
There’s So much more to find
GrindfreakMike
I look at it the same way.
Sugar Hieroglyph
Check out insect warfare!
MaharlikaAWA
This kind of music you cannot stop listening to until the entire album is over. It feels to good in the brain to stop it.
The BW Gaming
It’s like shoegaze but for bipolar rage instead of loneliness
PanasonicTooth
Shoespaz
strangersound
One of the best grind bands ever. Almost never equaled.