The pure essence of Garbage (2011)

(Unless otherwise indicated, lyrics were translated by M. D. L. & L’Atrabilaire, courtesy of La mesnie Herlequin.)

Go here for translations of the other Peste Noire albums.

Casse, Pêches, Fractures et Traditions [Brawling, Punches, Fractures and Tradition[1]]

‘What a disgrace! But where did nature and her forests go? It’s all foul, there isn’t even a wild hectare to hunt on. The air is suffocating, it stinks!’[2]

Hi it’s us! The braves of France
Nourished by wine, salamis,
The only ones not on their knees,
Chauvinist chompers of rancid garlic,
Unshaven, rotten teeth,
Chubby, small with hairless prows,
Dickheads, with heavy brows,
Broken arms, totally drunk,
We’ve come to sink the Whore[3],
Bang the slutty Republic,
Under the Organ of protection
Of the last buccaneers of France.
Hunting, Fishing, Nature, Extraditions,
Of technocrats and urbanites,
Our poachers jump in your tub and it’s
Brawling, Punches, Fractures and Destruction…
Run quickly bolshie, I’ve drawn my crossbow,
Considering the beers in my guts,
You’ll get an arrow in your brow,
Or in your coconuts.
Chop chop back to the tropics,
Here’s no place for your pricks,
Upon my Royalist honour.
I am the armed wing of the little old ladies,
Of the blond angels with goggles,
Of the producers of wine,
Of the pure products of a common Spring.
I am a fist in the arse of Marianne[4],
My first track was “Supremacy Aryan”,
I am the vice, the big rotten balls of the King,
As swift as one of Godfrey’s[5] crusades…
In your name Merovech,[6]
We’ll boot out all the wretches!
Yeah yeah for you my big Charley [7]
The false will be sent back over the sea,
Otherwise revered Father Capet, [8]
They’ll end up crippled!

Notes:
[1] The title ‘Casse, Pêches, Fractures et Traditions’  is reference to the agrarianist French political party ‘Chasse, Pêche, Nature, Traditions’: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunting,_Fishing,_Nature,_Tradition
[2] A sample from the French film Les visiteurs, in which the mediaeval nobleman Godefroy ‘le Hardi’ de Montmirail is magically transported to modern times.
[3] La Gueuse — ‘The Slut’ or ‘The Beggar’ was a nickname given to the French Republic by the Royalists and other opponents.
[4] Marianne is the symbol of the French Republic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marianne
[5] Godfrey of Bouillon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godfrey_of_Bouillon
[6] Merovech: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merovech
[7] Charles Martel: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Martel
[8] Hugh Capet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Capet

Cochon Carotte et les sœurs Crotte [Pig, Carrots and the Turd Sisters]

[‘Si voletz domnas gazanhar,
Quan crezetz que-us fassan onors,
Si-us fan avol respos avar
Vos las prenetz a menassar;
E si vos fan respos peiors,
Datz lor del ponh per mieg sas nars’

‘Assatz sai d’amor ben parlar’, a poem by Raimbaut d’Aurenga (1140 – 1173) written in Medieval Occitan.

English translation:

‘If you want to win ladies
When you deem them to be worthy of you,
If they give you unpleasant, smarting answers,
Take to threatening them;
And if they give you worse answers
Punch them right on the nose’]

Woman’s voice: ‘In France, a woman dies every two and a half days at the hand of her partner, put a stop to the cycle of violence, call 3919’

Ferocious anthropophagous kiddo stuck up in large-fannied fatties
My pine cone for a dime my snout gratis in their shite
Bow Chicka Bow Bow in the Kasbah my filth wizard let yourself get fucked
The replete spermbin retching out powder farts via my shaft
Satan-King! Satan-King! It’s King Satan that jumps on you
Huzzah! Take that! The cross right up your shitter
Down tart! Shut your mouth! Open your arsehole so we can fill it
You love it! You’re like that! I see it by your eyes squinting!
Canter on! My prole! Dammit your pigtails are my reins
Your neck, targeted with arrows
Which are my fists! Go on lick
The boots of the Willy’s portrait
All pricked up with his moustache
Against my wall speckled with stains…
Slut! Slut! The bitch returns with her farts, Queen of swine!
She forces me, with these fragrant aromas, to savour her arsehole!
To search its corners! To find a turd! To turn away from Willy!
I’m done with your bum now pass me your cunt,
Your gonna make me some little girls,
A family of ten and no back-chat,
Hidden cushy under the ground…
We’ll make them a little hole,
Sweetly like a fight’s round[1],
We’ll make them a little hole
Me and Arawn.
Sluuut! Sluuuut! The bitch is farting again!
But take a crap my wench! Make your peanut cake!
Slather some shit on my carrot
I’ll clean it down your throat
Squirting like your carotids
Its stinking foul plasma!
Filthy whore,
Why do you have tits??
I re-sodomise you.
I bugger you and it hurts you
My long gut
My animal
Submit gaping wide
Itinerant spermbin
Rotten nest of the Filthy Beast
Vast garage of the world!
Ah, slut!

Notes:
[1] Meaningless verse, for rhyme’s sake.

J’avais rêvé du Nord [I had dreamt of the North]

Between Martigues and Marseille,
Dipping into the waters of Africa,
Fate has dictated that I sit,
Close to Fos the septic tank…[1]

Where I was born the sea reeks of petrol,
Under an oxydized sky and a scorching dirty sun,
That falls as thick as a straitjacket
Over the company towers;

Where I was born sheet metal and plastic lie at the horizon,
Each piece of earth scorched like the Arizona desert,
Only vermin like to hang around
In this gigantic sauna and

Where I was born it is never a good idea to venture out:
The coppers have lost their balls in front of Arab gangs,
Who will stick you full of holes,
If your face is too pale…

Because where I was born is no longer France,
Our Gothic splendours:
Now decaying ruins of stone
Tagged with exotic swear words…

Audrey: ‘In the streets of France,
We’re punching kidneys and starting fires.
Lay down petrol, quick you can.
So that all the vultures,
Burn on the ground and expire.
If you don’t piss off,
Then we’ll fuck you up.’

Blond with blue eyes, calcinated,
Planted in the wrong place,
Begging for my legitimate fate,
I suddenly had a dream of the North.

Of virgin wooded expanses,
Of a welcoming permafrost,
In which I would never meet again,
The eternal ebony abhorrence.

I had wanted to break Phoebus,
And shoot back all of his arrows,
So that he would crash like an Airbus,
Between Marseille and Marrakech.

And you appeared to me as a mirror, a brother in hatred,
A generous purveyor of twilights and ice,
A discordant horn of European enmity
Blowing muck on those who scorn my race.

You Black Metal! Forged in garages at night,
Like home-made bomb,
Made half from dreams and half from rage.

You Black Metal! Emerging from the bowels of the earth,
Like a huge anal probe,
To blow up entire cities!

You Black Metal! Steel cutter of throats,
Deadly national spur,
That makes Red roses bleed [2].

You Black Metal! Suddenly you lent me your wings,
Like an immense boreal raven,
To tear myself far away, towards nobler citadels!

Audrey (encore)

Notes:
[1] “Fos la septique” is a pun on “fosse septique” (septic tank) and Fos-sur-Mer, an ugly town between Martigues and Marseille that has a large chemical industry and is very polluted.
[2] The rose is the symbol of the French Socialist Party.

Sale Famine von Valfoutre [Sale Famine Von Valfuck]

Don’t hit me in my face,
It’ll give you warts,
You’ll sink in a mushroom,
You’ll eat two three four punches,
And when my breath wafts over you,
You’ll sleep in gutter piss, mate,
Spread out like soft shit,
Skin sucked by flies.
What fool, you’ve never seen a fungus
With eyes, that talks?
For you ladies tonight I spruced myself up:
A hint of Kro[nenbourg] on the hair to put my mohawk up.
Glossed over with talc to enhance my pale face,
I strap on my trusty eye-patch, Le Pen style,
And to pick up fat chicks,
My crossbow with a sheath.
Yeah arsehole, it’s me who’s turned up roaring
Round the bend on my moped
Chucking a saucisson at you
To escape with your chick
And get down to some fun and games!
The filthy Famine von Valfunde
It’s the name of your aggression!
And to remember it in runes
KPN engraved on your forehead

Woman’s voice (documentary): ‘This little scavenger feeds on the remains that no other animal wants. The new generations do not adapt swiftly enough to resist Famine.’

Vroom! Fart! Vroom! Fart! Vroom!
My little chick I’ll take you to see the ocean,
I’ll bugger you in the sand,
So that you don’t give birth to a brat,
Such is my miserable secret…
Lil’ uncontrolled skid,
Oops damn I snuffed your whale…
Again it will make waves
Quick I need to bury her under a bump of earth
Hey there hick! Ohhh good-looking!
Yeah you walking here by chance,
You really look like a witness,
Come here so I can bully you,
Relieve you of some limbs,
Giving you a nasty time,
Oh the sissy! The little wet pussy!
She cries because I’ve cut one of her fingers!
Fine what would it be like if it was…three?
You’ll say nothing eh?
Your forefinger I tell you,
I’ll feed my mouth ulcer with it,
You’ll see how it has grown,
Soon we could float a boat on it
On the rivers of pus that it produces…
The dirty Famine ben Valfunde
It’s the name of your ablation!
And to remember it my arse,
Shitting on your dirty cunt face.

Sub-Saharan man’s voice: ‘I’m hungry. I haven’t got the means, and I see that just over there is food, I’m going to rush to it. Basically I’ve got nothing to lose, if I don’t eat I will die. Well I will try to eat, there’s an even chance I won’t die; that’s to say they might not attack me if I take the food.’

La condi hu [The human condition]

Syphilis, tetanus, hepatitis, scab,
Yellow fever, chancroid, myocardial infarction, brucellosis,
Pneumonia, gonorrhea, apalasia, cholera,
Mankind, malaria, diarrhea, Mokola,

SARS, AIDS, CAC 40, multiple sclerosis,
Scabies, herpes, puss, you’re only meat,
Ulcers, typhus, adverts, chikungunya.
Rust, megalopolis, the clap, you take it bro

Wars, excavata, ulcerative colitis,
Gas gangrene, lice, the Republic,
Fear, plague, nuclear, sodoku,
Man lies low, yells, sweats in his arse,

Borrelia recurrentis, molluscum contagiosum,
STD, MTV, Big Brother, all zoomed in,
My scoliosis, greater than 35 degrees,
Makes me see a large hole in the sky, that strangles me.