My Lai '68

Annotation

Black Metal group, formed in 2015 in Mainz, Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany. Members included: M.R. [Marco Reitz] (vocals), S.D. [Stefan Dietz] (guitar), R.P. [Rüdiger Plein] (guitar), M.H. [Matthias Hoffmann] (drums, 2015-17), and T.S. (bass, 2016-present). The song "My Lai '68" (The Crawling Chaos # TCCR-027), originally released on the 2016 demo EP "Demo 2016", was another metal track dealing with the My Lai Massacre - the mass murder of between 300-500 civilians in the South Vietnamese area known as "Pinkville", containing the hamlets, known as My Lai 4 and My Khe 4, and throughout the area of Song My, by US forces on 16 March 1968. The narrator provided a description of the day of the massacre: "Saturday morning, darn muggy... gearing up to kill". It then quoted the excuses later given by the perpetrators of the massacre: "I simply did my job, we didn’t know at all, they should not have been there", as well as doing the killings for "the fallen comrades". The song concluded with a vivid account of the actual killings: "Herding... mocking... spreading their entrails", noting that they were civilians: "piles of mutilated corpses solely elderly, women and children". This song provided a brutal and stark representation of the massacre.

Annotation by Justin A. Brummer

Annotation — My Lai & Lt. William Calley Songs

Black Metal group, formed in 2015 in Mainz, Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany. Members included: M.R. [Marco Reitz] (vocals), S.D. [Stefan Dietz] (guitar), R.P. [Rüdiger Plein] (guitar), M.H. [Matthias Hoffmann] (drums, 2015-17), and T.S. (bass, 2016-present). The song "My Lai '68" (The Crawling Chaos # TCCR-027), originally released on the 2016 demo EP "Demo 2016", was another metal track dealing with the My Lai Massacre. The narrator provided a description of the day of the massacre: "Saturday morning, darn muggy... gearing up to kill". It then quoted the excuses later given by the perpetrators of the massacre: "I simply did my job, we didn’t know at all, they should not have been there", as well as doing the killings for "the fallen comrades". The song concluded with a vivid account of the actual killings: "Herding... mocking... spreading their entrails", noting that they were civilians: "piles of mutilated corpses solely elderly, women and children". This song provided a brutal and stark representation of the massacre.

Annotation by Justin A. Brummer

Lyrics

English: Saturday morning / Darn muggy as usual / Orders are clear / Ransack and cleanse / Gearing up to kill / Obliterate for the just cause / Finally wreaking vengeance / For all the fallen comrades / “I simply did my job” / “We didn’t know at all” / “They should not have been there” / Herding them together in groups / Forcing them to get rid of both: All dignity and their clothes / To start the degrading shows / Humiliation, Dehumanization / Mocking before murder / Spreading their entrails all over the place / Without making a difference between adult and infant / The trophies of their glorious victory / Several hundred dead / Piles of mutilated corpses solely elderly, women and children

About the artist

Black Metal group, formed in 2015 in Mainz, Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany.

Themes

My Lai · Anti-Calley · Anti-War · Calley-Order

In collections

European Songs · Metal Songs · My Lai & Lt. William Calley Songs