"Holy Wars... The Punishment Due" (also known as "Holy Wars") is a song by American thrash metal band Megadeth. Released in 1990 it is the opening track off the band's fourth studio album Rust in Peace (1990). The song has an unusual structure: it opens with a fast thrash section, shifting at 2:26 after an acoustic bridge by Marty Friedman to a different, slower and heavier section called "The Punishment Due", interspersed by two guitar solos played by Friedman, before speeding up again with a third and final solo played during this segment by Dave Mustaine. The entire song is commonly referred to as "Holy Wars", with "The Punishment Due" referring to the heavier slower section.
Lyrics of Holy Wars... The Punishment Due
Brother will kill brother
Spilling blood across the land
Killing for religion
Something I don't understand
Fools like me, who cross the sea
And come to foreign lands
Ask the sheep, for their beliefs
Do you kill on God's command?
A country that's divided
Surely will not stand
My past erased, no more disgrace
No foolish naive stand
The end is near, it's crystal clear
Part of the master plan
Don't look now to Israel
It might be your homelands
Holy wars
Upon my podium, as the
Know it all scholar
Down in my seat of judgement
Gavel's bang, uphold the law
Up on my soapbox, a leader
Out to change the world
Down in my pulpit as the holier
Than-thou-could-be-messenger of God
Wage the war on organized crime
Sneak attacks, repel down the rocks
Behind the lines
Some people risk to employ me
Some people live to destroy me
Either way they die. They die
They killed my wife and my baby,
With hopes to enslave me
First mistake... last mistake
Paid by the alliance, to slay all the giants
Next mistake... no more mistakes!
Fill the cracks in, with judicial granite
Because I don't say it, don't mean I ain't
Thinkin' it.
Next thing you know, they'll take my thoughts away
I know what I said, now I must scream of the overdose
And the lack of mercy killers.
Mercy killings, mercy killers
Killers killers killers
Next thing you know they'll take my thoughts away.