A species had been armed with a double edged blade
A guardless weapon of delusion
Forged of a mirage of inherent transcendence
In the tangled mechanisms of life itself

As the curtain is being unraveled
The ego writhes in a spasm of insight
Delighted gods grunt like pigs
At the mere notion of a raison d'etre

From the gardens of Semiramis
To the trenches of Ypres
A meaningless uproar

Sublime truths are revealed
In the hammering of hobnailed jackboots
And there's wisdom to be found
In the shameful epitaphs of cowards

From the gardens of Semiramis
To the trenches of Ypres
From the grounds of Comitium
To the cellars of Tuol Sleng
From the spores of presence
And a swarm of pest
Unto the ironies of being

Falling hopes whip the ground
Among laments of sunken millennia
There are no paths to follow
But a nightmare of endless repetition

Those who peruse the annals of humanity
Demanding patterns, connections, developments:
Were there any to be found?
And was it sapience indeed that kept pushing this broken cart?

The wonders
The misery
The ascent
The emptiness

Falling hopes whip the ground
Among laments of sunken millennia
There are no paths to follow
But a nightmare of endless repetition

The stench of zeitgeist
Is the incense of discarded shrines
As the corpses put on powder and rouge
So that the hoax can proceed, ever sidewards
A cheaped out incarnation into a shopworn sarx
The soul congeals into a grimy lump -
Substance of the world, dreary and pale
At the feet of a spirit detached

Between the grinder and the abattoir
Such are the landscapes of grief
Grayness and glitz
Glitter and gehinnom

Between tedium and fright
Such is the song of the nether world
The hissing of rats
And the jarring chants of angels

A sacrifice to the gutter gods
Squandered redemption, misplaced grace
As an ailing mole burrowing in Eden
Living breathing downfall

Between the grinder and the abattoir
Such are the landscapes of grief
Grayness and glitz
Glitter and gehinnom

Between tedium and fright
Such is the song of the nether world
The hissing of rats
And the jarring chants of angels

It's a land of sun gone down
In comical grandeur
A sluggish danse macabre
Hyenas waltzing about

Would a new flood please finally come
A real rain and an assortment of plagues
And when all is said and done
Even the Devil won't care enough to spit in the mud

Out of howling of prophets
And curses of the righteous
In the ivory halls
A new kind of champion is bred

Herostrates for the modern day
High on good conscience
A noblest of sufferers
On disinformation highway

At the end of the day it's the same old script:
Do you believe in victory or do you hail defeat

Those finaglers of justice
Expert wrights in deceit
Carvers of the crooked timber
And their finely tuned farce
Proclaiming anger and rage
Under the mortal threat it thrives

At the end of the day it's the same old script:
Do you believe in victory or do you hail defeat

Ersatz revolt
Ersatz rebellion

For a new world would come
Every once in a while
"Purer", "brighter", "clearer", "better"

And the last of misbelievers
Will be trampled in the greatest of marches
Toward the radiant future
Where sheep are promised fangs

And only after the graves are filled
With remains of dissidents
And the frame of reference is torched
Together with forbidden thoughts

Then, and only then
The disciple is relieved
The true believer has overcome the evils
Of engineering of dissent

At the bottom of things it's the same old script:
Do you believe in victory or do you hail defeat

Ersatz revolt
Ersatz rebellion

For a new world would come
Every once in a while
"Purer", "brighter", "clearer", "better"

Ersatz purpose
Ersatz alliance
Ersatz ideals
Ersatz communion

Ground zero of transgression:
Whether ironic distance is true subversion
As it is carved in the structure
Of the system being opposed

Therefore the language of the scourge
Should be instilled in further discourse
The language of strife and hunger
In a state of relentless panic
Henceforth the struggle takes form
Of an absolute order, a total institution
The clandestine laws of the night
Should be exposed in broad daylight

Mocked by many - known by the few
The arsonists of perpetual aporia

Acknowledge the presence of a sinister side
That reaches far and wide beneath the surface
Acknowledge that there are aspects of self
Only to be revealed in burning, blinding hatred

The blades shall be sharpened
Upon gravestones of "kind" hearted
The measures shall be chosen
For maximum impact upon illusion of safety
The ordnance which will tear
Into the heart of daydream
Shall become the testament
Of the hopeless quest of prelest prophets

Acknowledge healthy confusion, the dirt behind the reverie
Unearth madness and probe into the absurd
Deconstruct with no promise of a restore pattern
And become free through the truth of the prelest prophets

The gruesome caravan is crawling in circles
Around pillars of cold grey light
Pale horse is there, but the rider's away on business
And the lion went roaring somewhere else
It's a begging time for dissolution
The commodity of ultimate silence on public display
The living dead stare at the gaping void
Waiting for the blade to finally come down

Not just yet

There's still innards to be ripped out
And hanged between the sacred trees
Bones to be broken, eyes to be plucked
For the amusement of a drooling god

Born again in a tidal wave of filth
Amidst chants of suffocating angels
An offering to a ravenous idol
That'll take more pleasure in puking it out

Gnawed and spat out
Still good enough for lowbrow vultures
Torn and led astray
Fed scraps of hope until the banal end

A bargain pilgrimage to the heart of darkness
The stay got extended quite a good bit
View is always the same: sorrow upon sorrow
And the orchestra keeps playing same song on repeat

A canticle arranged for gnashing of teeth
Howling of hearts and cracking of spines
And there's a hundred eager razors
Underneath the conductor's suit

Gnawed and spat out
Still good enough for lowbrow vultures
Torn and led astray
Fed scraps of hope until the banal end

In this rotten excuse for a world
At the bottom of the dustbin of history
Let's just try and pretend
That our corpses still have some class

The cold light
The gaping void
The final silence
At the fingertips

The cold light
The gaping void
The broken cycle
Not just yet

Forever uphill atop the remains
Of missed chances, of hope and innocence
The withered bones of those who failed
But more so of those who didn't even try
Bursting through the barbed thickets
Sharp with guilt, deceit and shame
To the petty truths buried underneath
Layers and layers of drivel and mud

In this day and age

The litanies of overskurkens moral
Are the only prayers to be heard these days
And all those who dreamt about a True Revolution
Got distracted by hurting each other

What has to be done, has to be done
The human nature is what it is
We cover our eyes in a call to arms
And turn one edge toward ourselves

Arm in arm in this futile strife
Where cards are marked and odds are little to none
Hand in hand with fate worse than death
Relentless in discontent

In this day and age

Empires get wrecked
Principles get crushed
Saviors get crucified
History gets what?
History fucking gets over it all

And the assassins in rose tinted glasses
At the wrong end of the tunnel of light
Practitioners of paramount scorn
And those who'd rig moral compass rather than bridges

Behold the world and spit on it
The noble and the scum of the earth
Just out of some basic damned dignity
In this day and age of excuse

What has to be done, has to be done
The human nature is what it is
We cover our eyes in a call to arms
And turn one edge toward ourselves

Arm in arm in this futile strife
Where cards are marked and odds are little to none
Hand in hand with fate worse than death
Relentless in discontent

What has to be done, has to be done
The human nature is what it is
We cover our eyes in a call to arms
And turn one edge toward ourselves