Mark of the Mole is an album by The Residents

The Residents

The Residents is an American art collective best known for avant-garde music and multimedia works. The first official release under the name of The Residents was in 1972, and the group has since released over sixty albums, numerous music videos and short films, three CD-ROM projects and ten DVDs....

, released in 1981. It was meant to be the first album in a quadrilogy detailing the conflicts between the Moles (a subterranean society whose gods offer salvation through hard labor) and the Chubs (a vapid, hedonistic culture).

After the Moles are forced to abandon their tunnels due to flooding, they enter the land of the Chubs seeking work. At first they are welcomed with open arms because the Chubs despise hard labor. Conflict arises when a Chub scientist invents a machine that can do the work instead, making the Moles obsolete and a drag on Chub society. What follows is a brief war. The short instrumental track "Resolution?" ends the album without giving a clear conclusion to the narrative; the liner notes to the album The Big Bubble (billed as "Part Four of the Mole Trilogy") states that the war ended with no clear winner, and the two ethnic groups live together in uneasy peace.

The work and its follow-up album, The Tunes of Two Cities

The Tunes of Two Cities

The Tunes of Two Cities is an album by The Residents, released in 1982. It is part two of the Mole Trilogy. Rather than forwarding the story of the battle between the Mole People and the Chubs, the record's concept is to display the differences between the two cultures through their music...

, became the basis for the Residents' first international tour, the Mole Show.

An Atari 2600

Atari 2600

The Atari 2600 is a video game console released in October 1977 by Atari, Inc. It is credited with popularizing the use of microprocessor-based hardware and cartridges containing game code, instead of having non-microprocessor dedicated hardware with all games built in...

 game based on the album was being developed by Greg Easter in 1983, but it was later cancelled.

In the Australian iTunes Store

ITunes Store

The iTunes Store is a software-based online digital media store operated by Apple. Opening as the iTunes Music Store on April 28, 2003, with over 200,000 items to purchase, it is, as of April 2008, the number-one music vendor in the United States...

, the word "Mole" in the title is censored.

Track listing

1. "Voices of the Air" (2:55)
2. "The Ultimate Disaster" (8:54)
   1. "Won't You Keep Us Working? Working Down Below?"
   2. "First Warning"
   3. "Back to Normality?"
   4. "The Sky Falls!"
   5. "Why Are We Crying?"
   6. "The Tunnels Are Filling"
   7. "It Never Stops"
3. "Migration" (7:15)
   1. "March to the Sea"
   2. "The Observer"
   3. "Hole-Worker's New Hymn"
4. "Another Land" (4:44)
   1. "Rumors"
   2. "Arrival"
   3. "Deployment"
   4. "Saturation"
5. "The New Machine" (7:16)
   1. "Idea"
   2. "Construction"
   3. "Failure/Reconstruction"
   4. "Success"
6. "Final Confrontation" (8:47)
   1. "Driving the Moles Away"
   2. "Don't Tread on Me"
   3. "The Short War"
   4. "Resolution?"

• Bonus Tracks (1987 CD release only)

1. "Lights Out" (Prelude)
2. "Shorty's Lament" (Intermission)
3. "The Moles Are Coming" (Intermission)
4. "Would We Be Alive?" (Intermission)
5. "The New Hymn" (Recessional)