Protomartyr / Relatives in Descent / 2017
My Children
cold, ritualistic, curdling into disgust and threat
A speaker addresses an inheritance he is handing down without affection or responsibility, framing his legacy as a swarm of 'children' who are really ideas, products, or cultural offspring rather than literal offspring. The song moves from a ritualistic, almost liturgical incantation of transmission into a curdled confession of parental failure and contempt, ending as a warning about what's being unleashed on everyone else.
legacy and inheritance generational failure self-interest disguised as creation cultural/commercial reproduction moral abdication
Who's speaking
A first-person speaker who claims authorship over a brood of 'children' -- likely a metaphor for ideas, products, followers, or cultural output rather than literal offspring. He addresses an unnamed 'you' who will inherit or encounter these children; his voice is detached, even boastful about his lack of care, making him an unreliable or at least unsympathetic narrator who seems aware of his own monstrousness without correcting it.
What happens
The song opens with a chant-like ritual of 'passing on' -- something being transferred, made permanent ('in stone, not sand'), from the speaker to a recipient, with the speaker repeatedly erasing himself from the equation ('I'm gone'). This ceremonial first section gives way to a direct accounting of the 'children' themselves: the speaker admits he never loved them, sees their existence purely as useful to him, and describes them as brainwashed, self-interested, and already rotting the future they inherit. The song ends with a direct refusal of responsibility and a final ominous address warning the listener that these children are close by and coming for them.
How it's built
The song is built in two distinct halves: an incantatory, almost pre-verbal first section built on repetition and liturgical phrasing ('pass on,' 'create,' 'to grace'), functioning like a ritual or creation myth, followed by a second half of five short verse-like stanzas each beginning with the title phrase, which function as confessional admissions. The piece closes with a refusal ('don't lean on me') and a looping, escalating outro that turns the title into a threat aimed outward at the listener.
Section by section
Opening incantation
The repeated chant of transmission reads like a creation ritual or will being read aloud -- something is being made permanent and handed over, with the speaker insisting on his own disappearance from the process. This refusal to remain present foreshadows the abdication that follows.
First confessional stanza
The speaker claims the children emerged from something sacred-sounding ('temple') yet immediately strips them of a mother, suggesting an asexual, almost mechanical act of creation -- production rather than procreation.
Second stanza
“Why feel that way when”
The speaker's admission of never loving his creations is followed by a rhetorical justification that treats their existence as a matter of utility or ownership rather than relationship, exposing the logic of someone who creates purely for self-interest and dresses it up as practicality.
Third stanza
“feral vessals of my self-interest”
Here the children are described as corrupted vehicles for the speaker's own ego, suggesting that whatever he has produced -- ideology, content, followers -- has absorbed his worst qualities and become unruly and animalistic.
Fourth stanza
The ironic address to 'innovators' inheriting a ruined world reads as bitter sarcasm toward both the next generation and the speaker's own responsibility for the mess, flattening any sentimental notion of generational progress.
Fifth stanza
The commercial language of dividends and drive-thru vomiting collapses the metaphor of children into brand or product, suggesting mass-produced rage and consumption as the final yield of this lineage.
Refusal and outro
“my children, they're right behind you”
The speaker's flat refusal to take responsibility gives way to a direct, almost gleeful warning to the listener that these children are near and dangerous, turning the song from confession into threat and implicating the audience as the next victims of this careless inheritance.
Craft
- anaphora
- The repeated opening of each stanza with the title phrase builds a mock-liturgical rhythm, as if reciting a catechism of failure; it mimics religious repetition to ironize the idea of fatherhood or creation as sacred duty.
- ritual/incantatory language
- Phrases like 'pass on' and 'to grace' borrow the cadence of blessing or scripture, lending the act of transmission -- whatever is being transmitted -- an inflated, self-serious weight that the content later undercuts.
- ambiguous metaphor
- The 'children' are never literalized; they could be ideas, consumer products, ideological heirs, or cultural detritus, which lets the song indict several forms of careless legacy-making at once -- parental, corporate, artistic, political.
- direct address shifting target
- The 'you' addressed early in the song (the inheritor) blurs into the listener directly by the end, collapsing the distance between the song's internal audience and the actual listener, making the closing threat feel aimed outward.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading treats 'children' as a metaphor for any self-replicating legacy a person or institution unleashes on the world without care -- ideas, ideology, products, followers, or cultural influence -- with the song functioning as an anti-ode to creation without accountability. A narrower reading could cast this as a specifically corporate or capitalist voice: someone who manufactures things (content, commodities, movements) purely to profit and reproduce, indifferent to the damage done once those things take on a life of their own. Both readings converge on the same core indictment: creation divorced from love or responsibility breeds something monstrous and self-perpetuating.
Context
Protomartyr's Relatives in Descent (2017) is widely understood as engaging with post-truth anxiety, institutional decay, and the erosion of shared reality in the Trump era, often filtered through oblique, literary, and darkly comic lyrics from vocalist Joe Casey. Specific biographical intent behind this song is not confirmed, so this reading is based on textual inference rather than documented authorial statement.
Listen for
- the shift in vocal delivery from a flat, chant-like recitation in the opening to a more pointed, declarative tone in the verses
- the way repetition of the title phrase accumulates meaning across the song, from clinical labeling to open threat
- the disjunction between ritualistic, almost sacred phrasing and the crude, commercial imagery later in the song
- the closing lines, where the addressee shifts from an internal 'you' to what feels like the listener themselves
About Protomartyr
Protomartyr is an American post-punk band formed in Detroit, Michigan, in 2010. The band consists of Joe Casey (vocals), Greg Ahee (guitar), Alex Leonard (drums), and Scott Davidson (bass).
2008 - present / United States
Full biography and catalogue