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Meshuggah - The Violent Sleep Of Reason lyrics



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01. Clockworks

Music by Tomas Haake, Dick Lövgren
Lyrics by Tomas Haake
Dismantling the clockwork that makes me the cynic
Pallet, wheel and click
The properties of my indifference
Reverse-engineering what makes it tick
Dissecting the finetuned mechanism
Rack and barrel, spring and pin
Its synchronous characteristics
To kill what makes it spin

Disassemble this machinery
Re-program these eyes. Undo this design

Labelled and filed. Each part indexed
Broken to pieces then thoroughly burned
Deconstruction of what I am
Buried to make sure he never returns
Taken apart. Defused. Blueprints turned to ashes
Eradicate the last remains, remnants of the insane

Disintegration
The destruction of me now imperative
To purge myself of this condition
Complete this dissolution a necessity

Break this deceitful machine

A lie - what once I was
Obsolete instrument
An outmoded contraption
A malfunctioning device

That callous self now extinguished
That malignant self now disused
That conceited invention to nothing now reduced

Complete disintegration
The destruction of me now imperative
To purge myself of this condition
Complete this dissolution a necessity

Break this deceitful machine

02. Born In Dissonance

Music by Mårten Hagström
Lyrics by Tomas Haake
We are origin. We are increate
You will see our coming for a thousand years
Every violent element incarnate made flesh and fused to one

You may call us Remnant as we are all that will be left

Brought forth by ancient whisper
Deployed by inverse suns
To capture the essence of creation and render it undone

We come to make all things collide
Those joules define what we are
An energy born in dissonance
Long before first ever star

Baptized in the river you call time
We know that we are sacred
In human tongue we're apocalypse
For we bring with us obliteration

Through spectacles tuned to infinity you will see our coming for a thousand years
You will know us then for what we truly are - The realization of every fear

03. MonstroCity

Music by Tomas Haake, Dick Lövgren
Lyrics by Tomas Haake
Skyline draped in shimmering red
Irradiant and treacherous
Neon prophecies hail the end. The capital of piety

Totalitarianopolis. City of dread
The glorious streets of dystopia continuously running red

This is where self is relinquished
Autonomy sacrificed
The idolatry of tyrants compulsory

Welcome all to MonstroCity
Where norm is that of the insane
All is illusion in MonstroCity
Bow to it. It knows your name

Relishing the idea of damnation
"The wailing and gnashing of teeth"
They know for sure where judgment's due
"What's above and what's beneath"

This is where we fail
Where the self-righteous reign
The empire of imaginary ghosts
This is blind credulity's domain

MonstroCity

In here everyone knows "the truth"
Which unforgiving icon is real
Intolerance and prejudice saturates their zeal

This is where self is relinquished
Autonomy sacrificed
The idolatry of tyrants compulsory

04. By The Ton

Music by Tomas Haake, Dick Lövgren
Lyrics by Tomas Haake
To you a beast you think you comprehend
Not necessarily made all evil
In the reflective pool of your eyes
I see fear and intrigue co-mingle

You hesitate to deem me all bad
Yet when my face is shown, your eyes avert
New thoughts sprout from that fearfilled soil
Your nerves and intuition back on full alert

You think that you've seen the truth, you think you know
Yet disbelief grinds, the doubt it claws
In you sleepless delirium I devour your thoughts

If you only knew how your way of life sustains me

Like electricity coursing through my soul
Your will to retaliate, your vengeful thoughts announced
I bring you me - conflict and death
And the promise of spilling red by the ton

I just might be there in your final moment
I just might be the last thing your eyes take in

05. Violent Sleep Of Reason

Music by Tomas Haake, Dick Lövgren
Lyrics by Tomas Haake
A systematically applied veil to heedless eyes
Focus deflected. Ignore
This is not our war
Bury the abject shame in the same bile as our ideals
The potent lubricant to deceits grinding wheels

The menacing implications, the violent sleep of reason
Betrayal we all help sustain
Humanitarian treason
This deadly inclination, this forfeiture of innocence
The sacrifice of guiltless souls for our own deliverance

The pain you feel
Indifference thrust into your back
Forged from our ignorance, from our immorality
A parody, this mockery
To no avail you kneel before this our insanity

Another life condemned
Your fate sealed the second you came to exist
Your suffering non-essential
For we care not if you subsist

We will all belie ang allusion, any crime
Cower and hide
Any culpability denied

All will imply it's an illusion, a fallacy
So when you die, remember we said it's not reality

06. Ivory Tower

Music & lyrics by Mårten Hagström
Why mourn this travesty, hide this slow degradation
Claw and compete mindlessly
All things undone too late

Craving our waking sleep
Is binding us to this ivory tower
Serves to complete the truth
That we cling onto

So what are these things you hold true
The defensive wounds of the unknowing eye
Weeping thousands of wretched tears
To lubricate the end with our fear
The concussion from the crack of the whip
Nullifies, sensations die
Always numbing, always preaching
Never resting, never sleeping

The construction is our penance here
Tumorous growth chiseled in white
When the darkness comes to slay the day
Enters horrors that you'll be wishing away

Which is the way

07. Stifled

Music by Tomas Haake, Dick Lövgren
Lyrics by Tomas Haake
Impotent king beneath our feet
You can rule down where you belong
In dirt compacted, buried deep, you dwell with those you wronged

Down there you can whisper, yell, even blare your odious lies
To your silent audience of worms
As they share with you your eyes

Tyrant. Oppressor
Your once resounding voice now just muted cries

You self-avowed murderous god
Ranks of annelids now you delegate
Your commands unheard under ground
Where your voice will never resonate

Your time has come
Declare the majesty fallen
Your dominance, your hateful influence forever stifled

Your sleep no longer impermanent
Decaying matter now sums you up
Like all the lives you've taken
Now so are you retreating to dust

08. Nostrum

Music by Tomas Haake, Dick Lövgren
Lyrics by Tomas Haake
Jealous vengeful fabrication
Halo-crowned invention
Sacred universal lie
Artificial, divine

Great archaic obsoletum
A prevarication
Deceitfully contrived

Synthesized, fictitious
Dreamed up by remote prototypes
Opiate for the yearning mass
Administered, applied

Three letter word for monster

Empty promises of healing
Profit aptly buried in the lies
An industry rapt with avarice
Medicating blind its acolytes

Useless panacea
Imaginary cure-all
To you we cry and supplicate
Into your hell we fall

Blind belief in their eyes
Forever atoning, credulousy waiting
Gazing to the skies

09. Our Rage Won't Die

Music by Mårten Hagström, Tomas Haake
Lyrics by Tomas Haake
Cry if you need to. Disguise, evade, hide
Run 'til you hit water, then swim
Murder in your wake. Plan, commit, exact
You have earned our rage, now fly

Beg if you have to. Trade away your pride
Run 'til you hit ground, then dig
Death in your wake. Those fantasies enacted
You will learn that our rage won't die

You will surely pay the ultimate price
There is no way you will escape our retribution
It will not matter how long it takes
You took them from us so we will take you

Do you believe that luck will somehow stand you by
Do you really think our resolve will wane
Do you really think that it will dissipate

We will haunt you. We will come for you
To collect on what you owe to us
Eye for eye. Life for life
Only payment in full can end this strife

10. Into Decay

Music by Mårten Hagström, Tomas Haake
Lyrics by Tomas Haake
The most eloquent confession - your silence
The most admitting trait - your turning away
Avert your eyes and hush your struggling thoughts
Detachment assumed as life mutates into decay

The most manifest sign - your disregard
The one apparent fault - your shunning of care
Contempt now bred, re-fed and well sustained
Division now groomed, nurtured and will maintained

Apathy. Opprobrium
Virulence and Animosity
This sums you up
Betrayal, disunion and fear. Isolation

Caught in this endless spiral. Locked equilibrium
A stasis founded in this atrophy of thought
Your eyes unflinching, unaffected by the misery
Gone is commiseration
Gone is any sympathy

One last farewell to perspicacity
Final surrender to futility
Dissociation. Severance
What have you done
What have you become