War Is Hell / Music

War Is Hell in Music.

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• The song "War" is an anti-Vietnam War protest song. The original version was sung by The Temptations but the Edwin Starr cover is also quite famous.
  War! Huh! What is it good for? Absolutely nothin'!
• Eric Bogle's song "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda". As an old World War I veteran who lost his legs at Gallipoli sits on his porch, watching the veterans march past every ANZAC Day, he muses:
  The young people ask what are they marching for, and I ask m'self the same question.
  • Also his song, No Man's Land.
    But here in this graveyard that's still No Man's Land
    The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
    To man's blind indifference to his fellow man
    And a whole generation who were butchered and damned
• "Mama", from My Chemical Romance's The Black Parade.
  But the shit that I've done with this fuck of a gun
  You would cry out your eyes all night long...
• "War Is Hell (On the Homefront, Too)," a No. 1 country song for T.G. Sheppard in 1982. A twist on the trope, the song – set during World War II – sees a 16-year-old grocery delivery boy have his first sexual encounter with the wife of a soldier stationed on the front lines overseas. The woman relates her loneliness and burning desire for sexual intimacy by telling the boy the title line.
• "Godspeed" by The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus
• "Hero of War" by Rise Against
  • Just listen to it
• The aria 'War, he sung, is toil and trouble' from Handel's Alexander's Feast.
• "Eve of Destruction" written by P. F. Sloan and most famously performed by Barry McGuire.
  "If the button is pushed, there's no runnin' away.
  There'll be no one to save, with the world in a grave."
• "The Patriot Game",
  "And now as I lie here, my body all holes,
  I think of those traitors who bargained in souls
  And I wish that my rifle had given the same
  To those quislings who sold out the patriot game"
• Metallica are pretty big on this theme. Their most famous song of such kind is "One", which is based on Johnny Got His Gun (covered in the trope's Literature subpage). Other examples include "Disposable Heroes", "For Whom the Bell Tolls", and arguably "Hero of the Day".
• Iron Maiden's "2 Minutes to Midnight":
  "The body bags and little rags of children torn in two. And the jellied brains of those who remain who point the finger right at you. As the madmen play on words and make us all dance to their song. To the tune of starving millions to make a better kind of gun."
  • Given their penchant for war-based ("The Trooper", "Paschendale", "The Longest Day", "Brighter Than A Thousand Suns", "Como Estais Amigos?") or anti-war ("The Aftermath", "Blood In The World's Hands", "Afraid To Shoot Strangers", "Mother of Mercy") songs, it's a recurring theme in Maiden's music.
• Black Sabbath's "War Pigs" and especially "Electric Funeral" from Paranoid (Album).
• Sonata Arctica's "Replica", especially the older version. "Destruction Preventer" also gives off this vibe.
  Now tell me, who won here, tonight?
  The price of winning worthless fights?
• Trivium's "Down From the Sky" is about dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in WWII.
• This is a common topic for former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters, whose father was killed in the Battle of Enzio during World War II; The Final Cut in particular absolutely oozes this trope thanks to it being written as a reaction to The Falklands War.
• L'arc-en-Ciel's "Hoshizora" is about both the aftermath of either the Tokyo firebombings or Hiroshima and dedicated to the children of Iraq.
  Flickering hot air is the remains of a dream,
  a town that fears the darkness goes to sleep
  A small happiness above the rubble, I was born here,
  I who watches the stars. nobody knows. nobody cares.
  I have lost everything to bombs.
• "Some Mother's Son" by The Kinks
• "Gods of War" by Def Leppard
• "Hell is a War," by Annihilator:
  See the people suffering, watch the children die
  Doesn't it make you wonder why?
  Money and power, the television's red
  One by one, they collect the dead
  Hell is a war - hell, what is it for?
• Muse's A Soldier's Poem.
  • Map of the Problematique has elements of this, although the main subject matter is different.
• The discography of Galneryus up until 2009 is pretty equally split between this trope and War Is Glorious. Some of the best for this trope would be "Blame Yourself" and "Stardust."
• I Was Only Nineteen (A Walk in the Light Green) by Redgum, which details the various horrors faced by the ANZAC troops in Vietnam.
  God help me, I was only nineteen.
• The Kaizers Orchestra song "170", about a volunteer soldier (given the number "170" and never referred to by name) who leaves behind his pregnant wife to fight in a war. The song ends as his CO sends him over the top first to check if all is clear, and no response comes. The song "Død manns tango" (Dead Man's Tango) involves a veteran who's been forgotten by the world and paralysed from the waist down: It's possible it's the same person.
• Nightwish's "Planet Hell" and "10th Man Down."
• Sabaton singing almost entirely about war, uses this trope from time to time. Some notable examples:
  • "Cliffs of Gallipoli"
  "How many wasted lives
  how many dreams did fade away
  broken promises they won't be coming home
  Oh, mothers, wipe your tears
  your sons will rest a million years
  found their peace at last as foe turned to friend
  and forgive"
  • "Angels Calling":
    "Hell on earth, the trenches mean death, better keep your head down low
    Charge their lines, the ultimate test it's a synchronized sacrifice
    Get the wounded after dark
    Left alone in no man's land
    Maddening chaos at the front
    Dream of heaven. Angels are calling your name"
  • "A Light In The Black":
    "Leaving home, set to sea
    Was this really meant to be?
    See the shore of our home fade away
    Facing blood, facing pain
    Have our brothers died in vain?
    Many lives have been lost on the way"
  • The Price of a Mile (over on the quotes page), about the bitter stupid bloody battles of World War I.
  • "A Lifetime Of War" (English version):
    "Has man gone insane?
    A few will remain
    Who'll find a way
    To live one more day
    Through decades of war
    It spreads like disease
    There's no sign of peace
    Religion and greed
    Cause millions to bleed
    Three decades of war"
    • The Swedish version offers a more personal view of the war.
  • They also covered the aforementioned "For Whom the Bell Tolls."
• Ralph Vaughan Williams' Dona Nobis Pacem sets to music sections of the Roman Catholic Mass, poems by Walt Whitman, a speech by John Bright MP opposing the Crimean War, and selections from the Bible. Vaughan Williams had been an ambulance corpsman in the Great War, and Whitman wrote in response to the US Civil War.
  For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
  I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin - I draw near,
  Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.
• Benjamin Britten's War Requiem sets nine poems by Great War soldier Wilfred Owen to music and surrounds them with Ominous Latin Chanting. The standard text of "Agnus Dei" in the Requiem mass replaces the line "Dona nobis pacem" (Grant us peace) with "Dona eis requiem sempiternam" (Grant them everlasting rest); the "Agnus Dei" in the War Requiem uses both.
• The Planets by Gustav Holst starts with "Mars, the Bringer of War". With the hammering ostinato drums, asymmetric, unsteady 5/4 and 5/2 time, blaring brass, and the shrill, dissonant chords at the very end, it shocked audiences with its violence and brought to mind recollections of the Great War, despite being written before the War.
• "Army Dreamers" by Kate Bush.
• "This Is Why We Fight" by The Decemberists:
  "Come the war, come the avarice
  Come the war, come hell
  Come attrition, come the reek of bones
  Come attrition, come hell"
• "Masters of War" by Bob Dylan from The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.
  • The cover by The Staple Singers was made famous by Resistance 3.
• Billy Joel's "Goodnight Saigon", about The Vietnam War, is well known for its realism and the many hearts it broke. To give an example, these are the opening lines.
  "We met as soul mates on Parris Island
  We left as inmates from an asylum
  And we were sharp, as sharp as knives
  And we were so gung-ho to lay down our lives..."
• This is a common theme used in the Gorillaz anti-violence ballads, but "Dirty Harry" from Demon Days (Album) (namely the rap solo) is an especially good sample:
  "I got a ninety-days digit and I'm filled with guilt
  From the things that I've seen
  Your water's from a bottle / Mine's from a canteen
  At night I hear the shots ring, so I'm a light sleeper
  The cost of life, it seems to get cheaper..."
• Smile Empty Soul has a few of these such as "This Is War" and "God's Army" where they make their opinion on the subject extremely clear.
• Toxic Holocaust use the exact phrase in "War Is Hell," which includes near nearly 1 minute of chanting "war is fucking hell."
• "Still Spinning Shrapnel" by Skyclad.
• God Dethroned released a concept album based on the battle of Paschendale. They did not skimp on the details.
• Warbringer seems to invoke this trope more often than not, especially the song 'Forgotten Dead', below. YMMV, as they tend to toe the line between condemning and glorifying war with their explicit, visceral lyrics.
  "The whistle blows, you are forced to advance into oncoming machine gun fire
  Caught in the blast as the mines detonate lifeless bodies hang from barbed wire
  Stabbed through the gut by a bayonet, blood chokes your scream
  Another dying soul is laid upon the altar of mankind's greed"
• Avenged Sevenfold has the song "M.I.A." on City of Evil, "Gunslinger" on the self-titled album, "Danger Line" on Nightmare, the title track of Hail to the King and "Angels" on The Stage... It's a theme that inspires them apparently.
• Carach Angren's "The Funerary Dirge of a Violinist"
  And so the instrument of peace is silenced by the one of war
  It plays the music of the dead; music made of lead
  I've had enough of this sickening war and it's murderous puppets!
  They don't understand the language of music cannot be spoken in death
• "Combat" from Heaven Shall Burn deals with child soldiers.
  You are an orphan now,
  Adopted by the beast of war
  The end of all your childhood dreams has come
  A life of combat, forevermore
• Phil Ochs's Signature Song is considered to be be I Ain't Marching Anymore.
  For I marched to the battles of the German trench
  In a war that was bound to end all wars
  Oh I must have killed a million men
  And now they want me back again
  But I ain't marchin' anymore
• The traditional Irish anti-war song Johnny I Hardly Knew Ya details the maiming the titular soldier receives when off fighting, and the horror of people seeing him when he returns.
  Where are your legs that used to run
  When you went to carry a gun
  Indeed your dancing days are done
  Oh Johnny, I hardly knew ye.
  ...
  Ye haven't an arm, ye haven't a leg
  Ye're an armless, boneless, chickenless egg
  Ye'll have to be put with a bowl out to beg
  Oh Johnny I hardly knew ye.
• Tom Waits: "Hell Broke Luce" from Bad As Me.
• Old Crow Medicine Show: "Big Time In the Jungle"
• "War" by Bob Marley from Rastaman Vibration, based on a speech by Haile Selassie for the UN.
• War Ina Babylon by Max Romeo.
• "Mars: Bringer Of War" by Gustav Holst from The Planets.
• Australian folksinger Judy Small's "Mothers, Daughters, Wives" is about the women the soldiers left behind, and how their roles changed as the men of each successive generation left and, perhaps, never came back.
  Then your daughters grew to women, and your little boys to men
  And you prayed that you were dreaming when the call-up came again!
  But you bravely smiled, and held your tears, as they proudly waved goodbye,
  But the photos on the mantlepiece, they always made you cry.
• No Bravery by James Blunt focuses especially on the horror of the civilian population.
• The unfinished song "Ronin" by Cormorant explores this theme. Even though it was a 1/4 of the way finished, Arthur von Nagel provided the rest of the lyrics.
  You once visited the graves
  Of the heroes and the knaves,
  Asked God why it wasn't you,
  Why you lost the will to live,
  Why your homeland wouldn't give
• A lot of lyrics of later Dismember, particularly on Massive Killing Capacity. From "On Frozen Fields":
  On frozen fields of horror
  March through the firestorm
  Mangled victims lay
  Forgotten and forlorn
• Kreator's Warcurse makes it clear what the song is about from the very first lines:
  Envision World War Two
  In a land that's ruled by hate and hunger
  I guide the fading souls
  As bodies drown in flames
• Galaxy Hunter's "Kandahar" is about a platoon of soldiers fighting The War on Terror in Afghanistan.
• "Out in the Fields" by Gary Moore & Phil Lynott is a deceptively upbeat song whose lyrics warn that "No color, religion, flag, or uniform ever stopped a bullet from a gun".
• "Mimi wo Sumashite" by Hazuki Fujiwara if the lyrics remind you of losing your family during a war.
• Apocalypse Orchestra's "Theatre of War":
  Dead men walking, trumpets blare
  Death rides by on his bony mare
  Triumph is certain, in the mind's eye
  Truth hides under limbs piled high
• The Concept Album Domino Theory by Bolland And Bolland. Best known for the song "In the Army Now" which was also covered by bands such as Sabaton and especially Status Quo.
  You've got your orders better shoot on sight,
  your finger's on the trigger but it don't seem right
• "Born in the U.S.A." by Bruce Springsteen, a commentary on the return of American soldiers to their country after The Vietnam War:
  Got in a little hometown jam
  So they put a rifle in my hand
  Sent me off to a foreign land
  To go and kill the yellow man
• A common theme in David Rovics' work, his songs tell how the horror of war leaves no one untouched: the soldiers (e.g. "When Johnny Came Marching Home"), the non-combatants (e.g. "Baghdad") and those left at home (e.g. "Song for Cindy Sheehan").
• "Dirty Paws" by Of Monsters and Men tells the story of a war between two groups of forest creatures: The bees, not wanting to share the sky, declare war on the birds. The creatures of the forest, led by Dirty Paws, helped the birds take down the tyrannical bees, but the formerly green forest was "colored black" as a result.
• "Courage Knows No Bounds" by Heather Alexander is about the losses and bloodshed of war. The singer is told after the battle that they'd "won," and taken a small tract of land from the enemy, while the battlefield is littered with the dead and dying.
• Slayer has a few war-inspired songs, but "Eyes of the Insane" is a particular standout example of this trope. The music video makes it even worse with images of human suffering, the life the soldier had before the war, and undergoing a graphic surgery scene after being wounded. It ends with the soldier being Driven to Suicide.
  The eyes of the insane
  On an demented campaign
  Flashbacks, panic attacks
  Death raising his ugly face at me
  Got to make it stop
  Can't take it anymore
  Death's face keeps haunting me
  It just keeps coming back for more
• "Atrocity" by Inkubus Sukkubus
  The poor farmer boy goes to the war
  With his father's pride and his mother's tears
  He'll go a virgin to both women and blood
  But he'll return a monster; mad crippled and blind
  And his name is Atrocity
  And his name is Atrocity
• Parodied with Nanowar of Steel's song "Pasadena 1994", an Affectionate Parody of Sabaton who are known for their songs on this theme. The song depicts the 1994 FIFA World Cup finals between Italy and Brazil as a bloody battle between two mighty titans. Sabaton's lead singer, Joakim Broden, also provides vocals just to add to it.
• "Hell Broke Luce" by Tom Waits doesn't sing about the horrors of war so much as it roars about it with the force and fury of a neighborhood being carpet bombed.

I had a good home and I left, right, left
That big fucking bomb made me deaf, deaf
A humvee mechanic put his kevlar on wrong
I guarantee you'll meet up with the suicide bomb!

• Samantha Moore: "Glory Reaped" is sung by a young woman who disguised herself as a boy to enlist and win glory in battle to earn her father's pride. However, the horror of the carnage and horror left over by the end, and in particular the sight of a dying boy crawling to her after mistaking her for his own sister, shock her into realizing that war is a horrible act of butchery and drive her to run away from home for good and swear off martial life forever.

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