Get all 6 ThornBrain releases available on Bandcamp and save 65%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Rise in Love, The Forgotten Ones (The 2020 Mixes), Buried Secrets & Old Lies (Remixed & Remastered), Worldbuilder, Buried Secrets & Old Lies, and Nobody Cares Unless You're Pretty or Dying.
1. |
Micronova
04:16
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No one knows what it is
Or the cause
No one's sure why it comes
Or what it does
But the lonely girl can tell
She's not where she was
The micronova
Has called you out
Of the normal
To bring about
More to wonder
More to find
The micronova
Is in your mind
And your mind is all that you will
See in there
The micronova
Can't tell what's right
Both anger and imagination
Bring new sight
A body and a brain are both
Alight
The micronova
Has called you out
Of the normal
To bring about
More to wonder
More to find
The micronova
Is in your mind
And your mind spilled out to a new plane
Out here
In time
All you want
Is all you'll see
Here the song
That you hear
Is in the style
Of your wile
All the worlds you loved before
Bring any part
Endless black turns to green and blue
That's just the start
The micronova
Has called you out
Of the normal
To bring about
More to wonder
More to find
The micronova
Maybe a dream
Maybe reality
Or maybe both agleam
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2. |
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Gaping hole in your leg
But to your side
Gaping hole in their head
They nearly died
Everybody's pitched against
Another one
Seeing who can be more
Cruelly overrun
I just want to
Tell my dad
That I didn't plan to stay
A lifetime undergrad
But you need a tragedy
To befall you
Before you're welcomed in
The pain queue
We're not running a competition
For a bad life
The future didn't last long
Did it
My education took its
Precious time
You treat me like a
Special case
To want to flip a switch
To switch my mental space
All I want's a button
For a fantasy
Call a monster my new friend
To die for me
Live in a rock by the lake
Yes, in it
Lick a hovel out of it
Until you fit
We're not running a competition
For a bad life
First step to combating your misery
Go and find the first prick to invalidate it
Second is to give up, go do something else
Do that something until it's replaced your need to process
That's the stage I'm currently at
I stopped looking for a stage three today
'Cause the easiest day of your life is your birth
And the cost of life is inverse to its worth
We're not running a competition
For a bad life
Only crows squawk more than these people
And they're just a hint smarter
And you know what they tell me
Anything that doesn't kill me
Will look good on a resume no one will see
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3. |
Cancerous Winter
03:06
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This is a record of mourning
A house of memory
This here will serve as a warning
Excess or anxiety
No more breaths in the morning
Breaths know not to repeat
Hard to know what to think of them
Hard to think you will never meet
Hard to meet or accept the loss
Loss of a hero to the mercy seat
No one was ready for
The cancerous winter
No heroes anymore
And no one to let them go, no
This is a record of wallow
A house of fretfulness
How likely are you to follow
Circumstantial evidence
No choice now but to wait
Wait for the word to go out
Out of chances to make a change
Out of changes to bring about
About now that the word comes in
Word of another permanent blackout
No one was ready for
The cancerous winter
No heroes anymore
And no one to let them go, no
This is a record of contempt
A house of disappointment
This here will serve as our policy
Keep your fucking hands off of me
You don't change the world, you remake it
You don't blaze a trail, you take it
You don't stand on the shoulders of giants
You dig your heels in a corpse
Kill your heroes, make it even
We'll rip you out by force
No one was ready for
The cancerous winter
No heroes anymore
And no one to let them go, no
This is a record of mourning
A house of memory
This here will serve as a warning
Keep your fucking hands off of me
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4. |
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No escapism this time
A proper escape
Is what I really need
Lost my composure
Put my fist through the monitor
Found a different offline
It's a different place
In what types like me
Would call the twilight
Not a realm
Not a zone
Just mine
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5. |
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All black
That's all she saw at first
For a second she thought she'd gone blind
Or this is just what being electrocuted is like
No. She saw the rest of her
and the gash in her hand
"How am I gonna fix that?" she muttered
And it healed
"Oh. Well then. If it's that easy,
can I go back home please?"
Her room faded into being around her
Everything seemed to be where it was supposed to
The TV behind her by the closet door
Her just-too small bed in the corner
Her desk and her computer beside it
But something was wrong with the monitor
It wasn't broken, like she'd left it
It seemed completely empty
Like the void she'd just left was in there
She recalled that she had been playing a new game, before all this happened
And the monitor flickered back to life
Inside was the rolling green fields
She so often saw in her favorite games
She could almost reach her hand through
She leaned through the monitor out into the open field
But hesitated for a second
Then decided, what the hell, since when is a coma ever like this
And spilled out onto the grass
It was only a field, no landmarks, at least at first
She couldn't help but play out one of many rousing orchestras in her head just looking at it
On cue, the empty space around her began to fill
Mountains in the distance, at least one volcano
Crumbled stone buildings dotted the landscape
At the center of the field, a clock tower stood in the middle of a walled-off town
Ahead of her, a cathedral sat perched high on a mountain spire
Beneath its shadow, a beastly-looking palace and the cobblestone city it ruled
She didn't even need to think of the details
They just appeared that way, like it knew all of her favorite things
Figures of various shapes, origins, and concentrations of hair traveled in and out of these places
Many, if not all, she knew from specific situations that have always stuck with her
Striking elated chords of familiarity
One problem
That volcano is definitely erupting
"Oops.
How am I gonna fix that?" she muttered
And it calmed
"Oh. I get it."
She wasted no time
Anything she could possibly think of that hadn't already appeared
She willed it into being
From her favorite heroes to the occasional imbecile
For flavor
Taking a seat in the skies
She observed
Her very childhood, and then some, made tangible
The only pieces she'd left out were...
Well. In the off-chance all this is real,
Probably best not to willingly put anyone in danger
As if on cue, to the north, she saw a tower
She knew what such a thing portends
Even the cathedral required a check, just to be safe
"So... How am I gonna fix that?" she muttered
The tower sank back into the ground
And she turned away with relief
In the mountains below where the tower once stood
Many eyes stared up into the sky
"We found her."
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6. |
Electricity
04:08
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The morning brings
Electricity
The weather brings
Electricity
With the promise
Of possibility
Worldbuilding
I can make the air
I've always ached to breathe
With all I need
Electricity
They're walking with me
Electricity
Throw the sword to me
Catch the lightning with me
The journey brings
Electricity
Euphoric me
Elecricity
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7. |
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Tell me about your planet
What's it like there in your land
Is it half what we have here
Did you roll it up by hand
All or no
We know where everything is now
You don't get lost on your own
But not here
Look at the fields that I
Laid out before you
Know that no matter what
Direction you take
You will forget all your
Goals on the way
What to tell you about my planet
Once you look you know
You'll forget it
I was not alone
And felt lonelier
But not here
Look at these people I
Laid out before you
Know that no matter how
Far down you break
Theirs is the pieces
Your heart will replace
What to tell you about my planet
Beauty
Empathy
Shark
Shark
I am the conditioner
For the human condition
The micronova
Gifted me
With all anyone
Will ever need
I'm the human conditioner
What to tell you about my planet
I forget
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8. |
Northern Mantra
08:07
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The future didn't last long did it
The future didn't last long did it
Our blood doesn't pump
It flows more like a river
No heart, no beat to stop
Our actions are programmed memories
Our predilection to eradicate as we please
Now you are up for the chop
You may call us evil
We're too human for that
You may throw your heroes
Back in our face
You may call us monsters
We're too human for that
You may play to defeat us
But we're the ones you loved in the first place
Spikes upon our backs and our shoulders
Laughing at your world in monochrome
A new army of unlikely allies
We want the same as we did back home
Are we violator
And how human is that
We will fight your heroes
On anyone's land
You may call us villains
And how human is that
You may play to defeat us
But the plot won't always go as you planned
Down an army rode from the mountains
Out she called for them to disappear
Her words only brought more beyond the horizon
Numbers rising right beside her fear
If this is all my fantasy
Why has my power abandoned me
They have come for me
Wreck my colony
Bring back everything
I threw away
They're a part of me
The dichotomy
Of my life
I will not replay
They have come to
Collapse my colony
Now I know I can't
Get away
Every one of them she recognized
Why were none of them from a fiction
Her blood ran cold as she began to wisen
Her own desires called a malediction
If this is all my fantasy
Why did my nightmares follow me
They have come for me
Wreck my colony
Bring back everything
I threw away
They're a part of me
The dichotomy
Of my life
I will not replay
They have come to
Collapse my colony
Now I know I can't
Get away
The first wave hit the castle walls
The second broke the cathedral doors
Fire, metal, the blackest magic burst from their hand
And at her feet, the man in charge took his stand
His face at last
She saw it clear
It was the last face she saw
Before she first came here
The first words he said
Made her body freeze
It's been a while
Can we go home please?
You've done well
But now your break is done
We're not all here
To ruin all your fun
There's some back home
Who couldn't come along
We're not all here
There's more where you belong
She slumped with a defeated frown
But as he monologued her hand reached down
You were wrong
To run off all alone
You think you
Could live out on your own
You can't take care
Of anything of yours
Your life was spent
In fear of the outdoors
We're not all here
To take care of a child
There's nothing left
Of yours to be defiled
But before
He began to laugh
He felt a sword
Split his skull in half
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9. |
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There was one back home
Who treated me well
Their name escapes me now
There was one back home
Who listened to me
Their face fell out of my head
I wish sometimes that I was the one
With the words to describe what I'm feeling
But the last one to witness my best side
Was a spider who died on my ceiling
There was a face in the crowd
I recognized
Who I once tried to escape
There was a face that went
With the man up front
But that wasn't the shape
Was I followed or was I to blame
Why'd the grief never fall out of me
Was I eaten by my imagination
And regrets followed at the apogee
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10. |
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Ah worldbuilder
You are going back home
Whether you mean to or not
Round trip with a lot of baggage
Facing what you already fought
You're a band without an audience
And it's not quite a band either
An audience without a drummer
Who's the only one who comes through the speakers
Ah worldbuilder
All you want and all the bother
Ah worldbuilder
Death of your own author
Wearing nothing but time itself
Your fantasies will all enlace
Can't see past the continental shelf
That's just the game freezing in place
Last left school when you were 23
And only took a breakdown to get this far
But it can't help but still haunt your dreams
Those aren't the keys to Ric Ocasek's car
Ah worldbuilder
All you want and all the bother
Ah worldbuilder
Death of your own author
When your rock is an ocean
Are you so surprised you drown
Not good enough to repair
Not broken enough to put down
Worldbuilder
One slip from you and it all curds
Your melodies rhyme better than your words
The micronova heeded your call
Now an open mouth is your mess hall
You're too young, too alone
Too uneducated
To know what innocence is
Didn't spend enough time worldbuilding
Before you built your world
Thought you only brought your favorite parts
Then your own self unfurled
Do you clean up and try again
Or leave no more impearled
All you want and all the bother
Death of your own author
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ThornBrain Sacramento, California
Music and experiments by Mikaela Thorn. Punk-inspired, experimental, electric, electronic, trans and queer as hell.
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