Vår Gud är oss en väldig borg!
[Our God is to us a mighty fortress!]

My life is cheap and up for sale
The priest has called his flock to come
At the sermon in the church
They will name my name:
A dead man’s name

Stay and starve
Or serve, fight and fall
Taxed in blood
Blood:
That is what we owe
To God and our King
Poor folk picked to fight a foe
When that bell does ring

I will dodge the church draft
Load a boat and hack a hole
Drowning dive to flee this toll
Doom another to pay this tithe

To War!
They now call me
To War!
They won’t spare me
To War!
They will slay me
To War!

Holy crowns and richest gowns
Icons upon God’s stone wall
Those saints are standing
Oh, mighty tall

Fiery crowns, evil frowns
All those churchly men
Murder’s Angels sent
Down by jealous heaven

God is good and God is great
Our King is just and in need
Your debts to him are your lives
Paid in blood, paid in deed
Off to war, to south and east
Show your mettle and your creed
Drafted here for us all
You, sinning men:
Go bleed

Our God is our fortress
And this God may murder
Us

The church has called us up and asked for hate
And with joy clouds of greatest violence go create
For this war we’re forced to bleed and fight
For this war we darken the day, light the night
And for this war we spread the soldiers’ blight
And for this war all towns waken and ignite
For this war slaughter with all our might
But for this war forget what’s good and right

Is this my life, my role?
(War owns you, your soul)
Are these my deeds, my belief?
(In evil, sickness and in grief)
Am I human, am I true?
(War owns you, and all of you)
Am I nothing but your knave?
(Nothing but our slave)

Burning, maiming, self unblaming
Bringing those to the altar, Angel’s slaughter
Those die who hope for hope, church bells pound
And those die who raise up arms, chop around
Those die who hide away and make no sound
Those die who pray to God before they’re found
Those die who quickly run or go to ground
But those who stand and fight die every night

Is this my life, my role?
(War owns you, your soul)
Are these my deeds, my belief?
(In evil, sickness and in grief)
Am I human, am I true?
(War owns you, and all of you)
Am I nothing but your knave?
(Nothing but our slave)

A man of war
Is man no more
Live this lie
Yet inside die
My soul is eaten
My spirit beaten
All the evil I bear
With no-one can share

Is this my life, my role?
(War owns you, your soul)
Are these my deeds, my belief?
(In evil, sickness and in grief)
Am I human, am I true?
(War owns you, and all of you)
Am I nothing but your knave?
(Nothing but our slave)

A man of war
I’ll be no more
Not live this lie
Like an enemy die
Clamp your irons to my throat
Make me suffer as you gloat
Be it so, for I now leave
Life regain, suicidal grieve

My ills make me bleed
(We shall hunt you in haste)
In soul, in blood, never freed
(War will make you chaste)
No

Must I hack my way
Through madness
Through innocence
To make my way to peace and innocence?

And so you shall, our weakest child:
Desert, and you will pay
Your service still will stay
No
And so you shall, weakest child:
Your fragile heresy
Our vilest leprosy
Forever will you be our child

My ills make me bleed
In soul
In blood
Never freed

Murktide and Midnight Sun
Both ever shall rule
Over terrible lands of swamp and thirsty fen
Murktide and Midnight Sun
Both ever shall rule
Over these, our lands of blood and fallen men

Evernight and Undead Day
Both ever shall rule
Over fiercer lands of lake and sharpest tree
Evernight and Undead Day
Both can only rule
Over lands torn from us:
The shredded unfree

Murktide
Evernight
You rule and
Give strength to all men
Midnight Sun
Undying Day
You rule and
Take away all men

Mistress of Murders
How you break my songs
And bring us
An empire of blades and plagues
Steal all futures but one
Which is Yours

Murktide
Evernight
From afar, they all do come
Midnight Sun
Undying Day
But here they all can only die

Angel’s acolyte I am become
Turner of Her wheel:
The Breaking Wheel
Killer of those who have killed
And will kill no more
Nor sin no more

Tie them down
Apply that pressure
Bring to sinners
Her crunching pleasure

Around the bodies turn
Pain will burn forever
Cogs and gears
They spin at leisure
King’s justice done
Mechanics of his vengeful treasure
Make this pain
Life’s final measure

I am revolving
All assailing
You, I’m turning:
Execution!
Your soul I’m churning
All bones eroding
Castigator!
Levy the Angel’s due
Grinding through bone and sinew
Explore you to the core:
I am myself no more

Eat: I’m grinding meat
Probing: Pride unrobing
How come you aren’t succumbing
To the Wheel?

I am chained
My heart is pained
I am reigned
The Breaking Wheel:
Oh, bitter source of my sorrow

Why must I do Your bidding?
Why this ripping?
For you are my human shearer
Your own life, not much dearer

As Wheel, I do sunder
Rip apart
Tear asunder
Shearing
Shredding
Remolding
You

Round and round, Angel breaks me
My bitter soul now sundered

Arriving here
Through open gate
You bring your worst
Blight our fate
Do debauchery
And slit, slice, rejoice
Wreck our homes
And peaceful lives

Plunder, pillage:
Evil done
Angel taut to us brought
Burns our house, rains her curse
They leak their war
Through our door
They like to break
Bodies rape and children take
Make me a whore?
Human no more?

Draw up the barriers
Arm the wards
Summon hidden lake-bound swords:
Floating wisps to deceive
Your doings here ‘mongst the meek
Must make you grieve
Smash the gate in your face
Force you out
And force you dead
Plead our plight to the land
Break the malice brought by men

Demon lamps
Lead them grim
Show them now:
No need for him
Be our sword
Our newest lord
Wash them in deadened shine
Lights of fire flashing grim
Hide our home
Make our lives less thin
Wisps of death running grim
Help us live our lives alone
Alone

War take you far away
Let war break you
Ere death here brew
This we pray

Man:
Him diminish
Men and men:
Their lives now finish
And ours now stem

Take our houses far from worlds of war and men
From where all is pain
Bring those lights
To flit
To dart
Make life depart

Take us away from the world of war, of them
Away to where all is sane
Us do shelter
Us do save
Dampest earth:
Come us do defend

So we salt the land
Plough the grave
So we arm all swamp
Mask our grave
Do not come back
For we won’t lack
You are no men
Our door now shut

The forest is our bower
Hidden well
Therein our power
For here
Witches dwell

For Ironskull this field we light
Wait upon an enemy who hides
For our wrathful God we shall fight
Learn the debt we owe
Faithful work we do with all our might

For Carolus the King we here marched
Now standing straight for bullets to find us all
Waiting, oh waiting, still waiting
So that we may yet court her
She, Our Angel of Rightful Slaughter

Tired of our sins
God turns the heart of our King
To purge from us our lives so frail and thin
His heart now turned
God’s law is set to war
Grind down all lands, leave behind all pain and sin

Our defeat here at Napue we must now find
Our King’s heart bent and turned to throw us away
All prices we pay gleefully upon the field
Bloody the soil and shorten this grimmest day
So we fail
So we fall
Lost and done
On reddest day of Russian blade and gun

Few men truly stay mine
For me your work not yet done
The King’s forces fall, dwindle
His heart yet may melt away from war
Serve me:
To slaughter run
Carolus’s heart
Go rekindle

Bravest of men
How you fought to fall
Now stolen I weep for you
Captured and caught
My life unmoored
Undone from our shore
My heart calls to you

From Russian lands
I rise and retreat
Hasten home to my kin
Heed the King!
Feed the Angel!
Redeem our farmers’ tears and noble sin

Too much death at Napue we were brought
Ironskull’s heart bent to throw us away
Sin’s price at Napue I could not pay
Bloody that soil, long that grimmest day
Urged to more
I too turn
Back to war:
Empire
Sire
Fire

Seas of blackness to our refuge bring
Wraiths who hunt us with hearts of stone
On Shark’s Isle now we do cower
Wait for dawn, wait so forlorn
Across the gulf of waters bloodied
Men of war with weapons steady
Men of war their lust now ready
We wait, our future bury

Our menfolk slain, Cossacks knock
With devilry this loot unlock
Women’s lives are but meagre bribes
Bodies carved by more than knives
They have hung our priest up on high
Ripped the children and watched them die
Cossacks’ axes so very sharp
Now tune our ruin like a harp

Why?
This Isle did lie
Why?
This night we die

They smashed the locks of our homes
Vengeance bought through our groans
The cries and spells that we cast
Didn’t work, could not last
From victors’ pleasures forced upon a bed
To this Isle of rocks we fled
Now wraiths sent by war through the dark
Smell our plight like a shark

Why?
This Isle did lie
Why?
Our end is nigh

Baltic tides of conquerors’ lust
Wash up on shores of fear and rust
In Curse’s Angel they place their trust
Hacking, chopping, singing their disgust

Why
(Axes swing)
My
(Blood on stone)
Cry
(Seas are sickened)
Does not die?
(Dawn now cannot come)

Cloaked in ice
And wrapped with murk
I brim and billow
Lunge and prance
Fogs of black astride
Wind my poison and my pride
Rime sharpens my lance
Famished is my dance
Seas my garden
Sky my house
Freezing fire
All life douse
Sweeping forth to the coast
I bring doom to a host

The Northern war is shut
Our Angel now buried
We stagger home to our land
These fjords our final stand

There:
Like sticks they are
Men upon the fell
I’ll crack them
Rack them
Trap them in my ice

The King is dead, men’s courage fled
(Courage fled, all soon dead)
Let them head on home
(Here’s your home)
From Northern coasts they march
Filled with ague and ill
They’re not worth stopping for
(Worth stopping for)

At our back it arises
Wall of death a-rush
Crystal bullets pierce our skin
Murderous place of shards

They weep
They fall
All I maul
Tasty, fleshy, filled with heat
Fires go out
Lives follow

I descend
Rip on through
Fog unmoving
Makes them mine
Statues soon
Made of rime:
Arctic murder most sublime

We crawl, we freeze
(All your fragile pleas)
We fade away
(Now fade away)
Ice cries
(So your army dies)
Storm drips with lies
(Frozen lives)

Feed me!
Love me!

Beads of death
Strung across the land:
Army conquered by inhuman hand
Frozen forever their breath

[Instrumental]