Story Behind The Song

I realised one day that, throughout history, there has been nothing but war, terror, fighting and so on ever since humans evolved. No matter the topic, love, hate, religion, politics, creed, colour, in fact just about everything and anything, we have fought over. Whilst reading a book one day I came across the phrase "Guns and smoking barrels" and thought it made a perfect song title.

Song Description

The song begins by introducing the listener to some of the reasons why we have gone to war making them think of where it will get us all in the end. It moves on to scenes of battle, with various clips from speeches about governmental excuses for needing to go to war. Finally, we move to the end of the human race, and fade out to a what-if-we-could-start-again scenario. The song finishes on a very poignant note that should give the listener some food for thought.

Lyrics

Chorus
Guns and smokin' barrels
Will be all that's left of us,
In another thousand years or so
We'll all be turned to dust,
If aliens then visited
And took a little walk
They'd see guns and smokin' barrels
And the damage that they cause.

V.1
Black and white they always fight,
ISIS, Jihad and Kurds,
If only they would sit around
And fight it out with words,
Catholics and Protestants,
They never get along,
Religion is the best excuse
For starting up a war.

Chorus

V.2
We haven't learned a single thing
From World Wars One and Two,
You'd think that'd be enough to
Put us off of war for good.
But, Vietnam, the Falklands war,
The Middle East debased.
As long as we remain on this earth
We'll make the same mistakes.

Chorus

Pre-Bridge.
Governments across the world
They haven't got a clue,
They'd rather bomb civilians
Than do what they should do,
What they should do, what they should do.

Sounds of battle and speeches.

V.3
Now silence is all there's left to show
For a thousand years of war,
The guns have stopped, but the barrels still smoke
(Spoken) And there's nothing left at all. Well, the
Aliens have finally been, but all they could do
Was look around and cry...
"This universe sure is glad to be rid
Of this species called Humankind"

Chorus
Guns and smokin' barrels
Are now all that's left of us,
For, another thousand years of war
Has turned us all to dust,
The aliens have visited
And everywhere they walked
They saw guns and smokin' barrels
And the damage they had caused.

Guns and smokin' barrels
Are now all that's left of us,
(Rpt. And fade to speeches)