Citizen Cain

Citizen Cain (sometimes spelled Xitizen Cain) is a Scottish progressive rock band founded in the early 1980s by vocalist Cyrus (or Xyrus) Scott.

The band's songs feature complex lyrics by Scott on the themes of human fallibility, war, history, politics and environmentalism. The band's name is an obvious pun on Citizen Kane. The Biblical Cain, the first murderer, is frequently referenced in the band's lyrics as a metaphor for human destructiveness.

Their first album Ghost Dance (1984) featured fairly conventional rock music themes. The band split up in 1987, but Scott re-launched it with new partners in 1992, releasing a critically-acclaimed demo tape ahead of the album Serpents in Camouflage (1993, reissued with 2 bonus tracks from the demo tape in 1996?). This album and its successor Somewhere But Yesterday (1995) feature hard-edged melodic themes accompanied by Peter Gabriel-style vocals from Scott.

The Genesis influence is nowhere clearer than in the 25-minute title suite "Somewhere But Yesterday", which seems in part to be an homage to Genesis' 20-minute "Supper's Ready".

The two subsequent albums, Rasing the Stones (1998) and Playing Dead (2002), released under the band's original name despite its "official" name change to Xitizen Cain, consolidate Scott's lyrical style but have taken a less conventional musical route, with more keyboards, fewer guitars, and more complex time-changes. This has disappointed many fans who had hoped to hear more along the lines of the previous two albums.

All of the band's cover art is by Scott. Surprisingly and unsettlingly for album covers, they frequently depict scenes of impalement and disembowelment.