'' The Quietus '' and '' SoundsXP '' both highlight the 16 minute epic protest song , " The Armenian Genocide " , with '' The Quietus '' calling it one of the most powerful tracks Cope 's recorded . '' SoundsXP '' called it the album 's strongest track , describing it as " a powerful and moving tale about ethnic hatred . " In the song , according to David Cavanagh , Cope excoriates modern-day Turkey for refusing to recognise the crimes of the Ottoman Empire and " points a bony finger at the world ’s conscience and demands the ratification that Armenians have awaited for a century " . Cope adopts the character of an Armenian traveller caught up in the death marches of 1915 , recounting the tale of a brutal mass starvation . " He adds more and more musical ingredients to the mix , symbolically mirroring the desecrations heaped on the marchers at each stage of their route " . For the first 12 minutes it describes the death march in filmic terms , according to Ged McAlea , " and then suddenly locks into the word “ people ” , repeated hypnotically and relentlessly to convey the hideousness of the crime . " The riff-based title track with its 1960s-sounding Detroit soul talks of corporate " greedheads " and calls for " a new way of thinking " , while " Paradise Mislaid " and " In His Cups " represent some of the album 's more pop-oriented material . " Paradise Mislaid " , according to '' The New Yorker '' , " opens with piano-and-drum funk before giving way to a lilting ballad that roundly condemns the habits of modern living " . The folky “ Mexican Revolution Blues ” ends with what David Cavanagh describes as " a sublime coda that materialises like a Harold Budd interlude in a Phil Ochs tune " . " Russian Revolution Blues " was described by Ged McAlea as a " political commentary on Cambodia and the Cold War , with some razorsharp wordplay " . Both songs , according to Pete Redrup , could " happily blend in on '' Skellington ''
death marches of 1915
Armenian Genocide
Revolutionary Suicide (album)