A battle cry is a yell or chant taken up in battle, usually by members of the same combatant group. Battle cries are not necessarily articulate, although they often aim to invoke patriotic or religious sentiment. Their purpose is a combination of arousing aggression and esprit de corps on one's own side and causing intimidation on the hostile side. Battle cries are a universal form of display behaviour (i.e., threat display) aiming at competitive advantage, ideally by overstating one's own aggressive potential to a point where the enemy prefers to avoid confrontation altogether and opts to flee. In order to overstate one's potential for aggression, battle cries need to be as loud as possible, and have historically often been amplified by acoustic devices such as horns, drums, conches, carnyxes, bagpipes, bugles, etc. (see also martial music).
Battle cries are closely related to other behavioral patterns of human aggression, such as war dances and taunting, performed during the "warming up" phase preceding the escalation of physical violence. From the Middle Ages, many cries appeared on standards and were adopted as mottoes, an example being the motto "Dieu et mon droit" ("God and my right") of the English kings. It is said that this was Edward III's rallying cry during the Battle of Crécy. The word "slogan" originally derives from sluagh-gairm or sluagh-ghairm (sluagh = "people", "army", and gairm = "call", "proclamation"), the Scottish Gaelic word for "gathering-cry" and in times of war for "battle-cry". The Gaelic word was borrowed into English as slughorn, sluggorne, "slogum", and slogan.
The War Cry is the official news publication of The Salvation Army. Today national versions of it are sold in countries all over the world to raise funds in support of the Army's social work.
The first edition of The War Cry was printed on 27 December 1879 in London, England. In 1880, US Salvation Army Commissioner George Scott Railton published the Salvation News, a small newsletter. He published the first US edition of The War Cry in January 1881 in St. Louis, Missouri. Between 1920 and 1970, each U.S. territory published its own individual version of The War Cry. In 1970, the Salvation Army's US National Headquarters started publishing a nationwide version of The War Cry.
Shy FX is the pseudonym of Andre Williams, an English DJ and producer from London. He specialises in drum and bass and jungle music.
Shy FX's debut record was "Jungle Love", released in 1992 on the Permission to Dance label. Soon after, he signed to Sound of the Underground Records (often abbreviated as S.O.U.R.) and in 1994 released the breakthrough ragga jungle track "Original Nuttah" (featuring vocals from MC UK Apache) which helped to cement his position as a mainstay producer of the jungle/drum & bass scene.
Throughout his career, he has collaborated with T Power, both as Ebony Dubsters and Shy FX and T Power; their 2001 breakthrough track "Shake Ur Body" with vocalist Di was a number 7 hit in the UK Singles Chart. Released on EMI subsidiary Positiva, it gained widespread support from both club and commercial radio DJs and helped to further popularise drum & bass as a mainstream music genre.
The success of "Shake Ur Body" was followed by the duo's album Set It Off, released in 2002 on Pete Tong's label FFRR. Several EPs and single releases followed; by 2005, Shy FX had made the decision to consolidate his releases onto his own label and founded Digital Soundboy Recordings. In collaboration with T Power, they subsequently released the album Diary of a Digital Sound Boy on 17 October 2005, featuring the songs "Feelings", "On The Run" and "Plastic Soul". Shy FX and T Power also released "Don't Wanna Know" featuring Di and MC Skibadee. The song was notably used on the UK television programme Soccer AM as part of the 'Skills Skool' feature.
Oh I, I was marked from the day I was born
A rebel and I was the one who I am
My father could not understand the fire in me
There was, there was times I was crazy for real
So crazy I just couldn't feel, no, no, no
Confusion would stand in the door and tell me lies
But now I stand on my feet so alive
I'm a metal warrior, I need their cries, War Cry
I'm a soldier, soldier, a soldier of fortune
Ah, come take a stand
Together we'll let out a cry
I'm a soldier, soldier, a soldier of fortune
Ah, come take a stand
Together we'll never say die
Oh I, I did not choose, the music chose me
I was christened and destined to be who I am
The one that they said would be damned
A hellion child that...?
I stand at the mirror and sing
I dare to be different and dream, now I am
Big thunder that rolls on the land forever wild
But still, this feeling inside never die
I'm a metal warrior, I need their cries, War Cry
I'm a soldier, soldier, a soldier of fortune
Ah, come take a stand
Together we'll let out a cry
I'm a soldier, soldier, a soldier of fortune
Ah, Come take a stand
Together we'll never say die
Raise your fist and support your rebel outlaws
Cause nobody rides for free
The freedom we lose today, you lose tomorrow
Because freedom means something to us...
I'm a soldier, soldier, a soldier of fortune
Ah, come take a stand
Together we'll let out a cry
I'm a soldier, soldier, a soldier of fortune
Ah, come take a stand
Together we'll never say die