Track By Track: Bats' Red In Tooth & Claw

Bats guitarist/vocalist Rupert Morris give Ragged Words a blow by blow guide through the Dublin five piece's debut album Red In Tooth & Claw, out this week in Ireland and next in the UK. Review to follow very shortly.

1. Higgs Boson Particle

What better way to open an album than with a theoretical particle which may hold the key to understanding the fundamental laws of reality and the formation of the universe. I would like to dedicate this song to the brave men and women at the Large Hadron Collider in CERN.

2. Gamma Ray Burst: Second Date

Gamma Ray Bursts occur when a star kicks the bucket. Super high-speed streams of gamma rays shoot out from them poles in opposite directions. If we were lucky enough to have a gamma ray burst occur in our galaxy, and if it was pointed in the right direction, the Earth would be incinerated in a matter of minutes. This song’s about being on a date when that happens.

3. Credulous! Credulous!

This guy’s a scathing attack on superstitions and new-age practices. It touches on astrology, ghosts, psychics, and of course... Religion. There’s a refrain in it about temporal lobe epilepsy which is  a kind of epilepsy that induces hallucinations or “visions”. In religious types these hallucinations invariably take the form of a religious figure or presence. It is thought that many prophets may have suffered from this kind of epilepsy. Joan of Arc for example. It can often by brought on by a blow to the head, which Joan did experience at an early age.

4. Andrew Wiles

This song’s about a kick ass mathematician called Andrew Wiles who revealed he had proved Fermat’s Last Theorem in 1995 using the Taniyama Simura Conjecture. It took him 7 years. People had been trying to prove it for 300 years.

5. Lord Blakeney’s Arm

This one’s inspired by young Lord Blakeney’s amputation aboard the H.M.S Surprise and the Darwinian musings of the ship’s doctor.

6. The Cruel Sea

In this song we find ourselves adrift on a prehistoric (possibly Devonian(we’ve no way of telling)) sea. Smashed into rocks, we must call upon the noble grace of the Plesiosaur to save us from the jaws of the Tylosaur. The air is remarkably clear. There’s a sub-text in there but I’ll let you figure that out for yourselves.

7. Shadow-Fucking

In America there is an alarming phenomenon called The Purity Movement. It involves young girls attending a “Purity Ball” with their fathers and pledging not to fuck or even kiss until their wedding night. The father’s believe they should be the only man in their young daughters’ lives until that day. They all dance and skip around a monstrous wooden cross oblivious to the unhealthy bottling of natural urges and pleasure in the years to come. BATS find this kind of repressive patriarchal domination sickening to the tips of their wings.

8. BATS spelled backwards is STAB

This song’s about stabbing the bible in the heart......with genetics.

9. Star Wormwood

Are there extra-dimensions? Why do sub-atomic particles act the way they do? Why does the quantum world behave so? How will we proceed in future generations? What will happen to us if we do not continue to embrace science? Fusion? Meteors? Mist?

10. Vermithrax Pejorative

A mean old dragon lives in a cave on the mountainside. Who will step up to defeat it? A man? Dead. But no! God must have done it. Drink up the blood and sleep soundly without a care in your head.

11. The Barley

In the end it all comes down to..... Burning people alive.