As soon as I heard the song “Live like animals” by Nothing but Thieves, I knew it would help me try to explain something that bothered me this year at DCODE festival in Madrid. Although I’d also been to previous editions, this annoyed me a lot in this edition. As you know, in many festivals nowadays, if not all of them, you have to change your cash to plastic tokens so that the bars don’t have to deal with any money and “nobody” steals it. At the beginning of times (when they invented the currency exchange in festivals not in the Palaeolithic lol) and if they were nice, they give you back your money in case you had any left.

Then they stopped doing it, so we all tried to spend up to the last of our tokens for anything like a beer or a snack. This year’s deal at this festival was: no-money-neither-beer-nor-food. You were given back gigabytes… they were so considerate to worry about you just in case of hunger, complete drunkenness or empty pockets, you couldn’t use your mobile to look for what you need. Or better, you couldn’t upload the damn selfie with the correspondent hashtag publicizing them much more. For free.

Far from being cool to me, call me a weird, this was the last straw. The only conclusion I get is that instead of moving forward, we are going to shit, as they say in their song. We’re going backwards. Instead of being more human, they are making us more animals-like, without questioning anything, thinking for ourselves or even feeling feelings! And what’s more, all animals with the same fashions. In my opinion, and with everyone’s permission, where there’s a real beer fuck any gigas that neither feed me, nor quench my thirst. By the way, maybe I’m strange, but I haven’t found any USB connection behind my neck as in Matrix. We’ll see all in good time.

Nothing But Thieves and “Live like animals”

Here you have a video with the lyrics which you can also read at the end of the post. You can play the song and listen to it while you go on reading, so you can get a better idea of what I mean:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRgM3BFDiJw

First, click play. Second, I have to say Nothing but Thieves is a band completely underrated here in Spain. This track is a “smasher-pearl” that not many will be able to appreciate or understand.

They are highly powerful, their songs are pure energy, the lyrics are awesome and epic, they have impossible guitar riffs, and a singer who smashes it all around every time he opens his mouth, both singing impossible heartbreaking tones and also whispering in slow songs. No song equals another, they all are different in a way. They are continually changing the structure of every piece. You are probably expecting a chord, note or specific sound and “Bazinga!” they break every idea you could have had and they set new standards in what you were waiting for. But the best of the best, they also have explicit songs where they don’t shut their mouths up, and they protest against what they don’t like.

If you remember the movie Billy Elliot when he was asked what he felt when dancing and he goes like:

” Like electricity “

This is exactly what I feel when I listen to NBT. Electricity. The song’s vibration gets inside me, makes my blood boil and my heart beat faster. I start dancing and singing like crazy all around the house as if I given a high voltage discharge. You can see by my cat’s face that she’s wondering: “But what is it now?” lol They are soooo good that not only can they give me such a high-time but also move me deeply to the point of crying like a baby. This electricity-thing with some bands or songs is what makes them different from another, because in a way, they are talking to me, to my heart, blood, skin and bones. They are my “pearls” even if for another, they mean nothing.

In this song “Live like animals”, they criticise nowadays’ society, its lies, the media manipulation, the establishment of fear, the consumer society, and as we are in conclusion losing our humanity. I will even add, it’s them, the ones in the power, who are making us becoming more animals-alike. As donkeys, as sheep, as bees in the honeycomb … Everyone doing the same things, wanting the same, dressing the same, eating the fucking same dangerous food… I truly believe that some animals have more heart and empathy than some humans nowadays. But hey … let’s hope that there will be some of us who can appreciate the good, the different and the human. They reflect this hope in the song saying that it seems that children are waking up, starting fires and implying a rebellion dancing around the light.

I wish.

The lyrics

The lyrics in English are the following:

“Live Like Animals”

The TV tells us to be scared
We’ll make a difference if we care
We put our lives all up for sale
We get our truth from the Daily Mail
It’s madness, get used to it

Another unit to be sold
Pig love is all we’ll ever know
So we’re gonna live like animals
We’re gonna live like animals
It’s madness, yeah, it’s gone to shit

And now the kids are opening Their Eyes
And now the kids are starting up a fire
Dancing around, dancing around the light

So drink our blood like a parasite
For occupation, socialite
Just looking for another hit
Opinion’s what you say it is
It’s tragic, get used to it

So write your name as you come in
In case we want to kick you out
We’re gonna make you build a wall
We’re gonna live like animals
It’s madness, it’s gone to shit

If you’re a something, don’t ask for nothing
if you’re a nothing don’t ask for something x 2

And now the kids are opening Their Eyes
And now the kids are starting up a fire
Dancing around, dancing around the light

So wake up x4

So wake up
This aint a dream
‘Cause everything’s exactly how it Seems

And now the kids are opening Their Eyes
And now the kids are starting up a fire
Dancing around, dancing around the light

So wake up x5

This is not a dream
‘Cause everything’s exactly how it Seems

SO WAKE UP

Conclusion

What do you think? For me it’s a bang. Another one of the many in their last album. And in the previous the same. Why aren’t they known here? Because they aren’t played in the 40 radio station (one of the main mainstream radio stations here in Spain) lol but luckily we have Radio3 where we can listen to very good programs broadcasting very good music. The other alternative I have here is listening to American or English broadcastings online. It’s a pity they are playing at FIB this year and not coming to Madcool again, because I was going to enjoy them a lot seeing them live again.

You know… sometimes I open my heart and I feel and believe that there’s hope. I feel there are more of us waking up, opening our eyes. More of us who don’t want to be a clone, a robot, the same reflex of another one. I want to believe we are more trying to change this reality, to ensure equality for everyone. Many who dislike this political system based in lies, which laughs at us and creates injustice and consumerism. Not to mention they use and see us as figures or statistics to enrich themselves. We aren’t humans for them, but animals. Buuuut, sometimes I can see nothing but a dark horizon in front of us, where hope for equality is just a whisper in the wind.

And if I go to a music festival, what I want is to enjoy live music, to be with my friends, and drinking and eating enough food to spend 12 hours listening to music. That’s me of course. Then, the added extras that everyone knows about, are part of everyone’s freedom to enjoy a music festival as that, an animal. But if instead of giving me something that makes me human or animal, a beer, a hot dog or anything to physically feed me… or IDK… also a bloody shirt with the logo of the festival dammit! You’re giving me free gigas, you’re treating me neither as human nor animal, but as a dumb-ass being who will be happy of having something ethereal and makes that it makes me wonder where are we heading as a civilized society, because I’m sure I’m the only one who thinks this is ridiculous.

With all due respect, I admit this is me of course, because I’d rather feel alive and free with a beer in hand, than feeling like a product with more gigabytes of data on my damn mobile which neither feed me nor quench my thirst.

Here in Spain we have this band called “Siniestro total” and in this song they wonder about: “Who are we? Where are we coming from? Where are we heading to?”. No wonder why it’s coming to my mind now… lol hahaha any ideas?

I really wonder the same as them. Where are we going.