Bloodflood Pt.II by Alt-J

Album: This Is All Yours (2014)

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Songfacts®:

This is a sequel to the An Awesome Wave track, "Bloodflood," which told a semi-fictional story of vocalist Joe Newman being attacked in a Southampton park called The Common.

Newman sings here:

Dead in the middle of the C-O-double-M-O-N
Little did I know then that the Mandela Boys
Soon become Mandela Men

The first line was inspired by a lyric from rapper Big Punisher's 1998 track "Twinz (Deep Cover '98)":

Dead in the middle of Little Italy.
Little did we know that we riddle some middlemen who didn't do diddle

Newman explained to NME: "There's a gang in Southampton (his hometown) called The Mandela Boys. We were scared s---less of them when we were kids."

"The next line, 'Little did I know then that the Mandela Boys soon become Mandela Men' refers to the narrator wondering whether they're still in the gang or if they've just all got jobs and kids now."
Joe Newman explained the story of the song to Nothing But Hope and Passion: "Bloodflood began as just a riff and a melody that eventually became a verse idea," he said. "It didn't really dawn on any of any of us to turn it into Bloodflood Part II until we started writing towards a second album. I think as the ideas started to evolve, we started thinking about having a Bloodflood Part II and it being related to the other side of the story."

"The first part of the story is about a guy that's been slapped," Newman added, "while the second is about the guy that's slapped him."

Comments: 1

Bart from FranceNewman explained in an interview that the part 2 of Bloodflood was telling the story of bloodflood on the agresser's side (when part 1 was about him being attacked). The words "Dead in the middle of the C-O-double-M-O-N - Little did I know then that the Mandela Boys - Soon become Mandela Men" are also used in their song "Fitzpleasure".
At the end of the first hook, Joe Newman sings the french words "Assassin de la police" (police murderer), a famous french rap song by Cut Killer notably used in the movie "La Haine" directed by Matthieu Kassovitz.

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