[Verse 1] Dressed in bright colors for the mountain climb, paraded like offerings in the morning light, they made them cry, 'cause the tears were the rain, one by one, throats slit while the others watched it all, a few had their hearts ripped out for Tlaloc's name. [Verse 2] The bravest were taken, not killed, in the fight, bound and marched to the city of light, up the temple steps where the drums never end, hearts lifted high to feed the sun again, skulls on the rack for the empire to see. [Chorus] People live and die but the mechanisms remain, the priests grow fat and the kings keep the chain, the gods demanded blood, so the blood was paid, People live and die but the mechanisms remain. [Verse 3] A machine of conquest, of slavery and pain, built on the promise of sun and of rain, non-Aztec blood on the altar stone, a paradigm that fed on flesh and bone, millions gone, and the machine rolled on. [Outro] The Spanish came, for all their crimes, tore the temples down and stopped the climb, no more hearts on the altar stone — that machine was broken, that mechanism gone.
