Cradle of Filth

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2. Unbridled At Dusk

A celebration of the damned
The unfettered few who choose to roam
Sharing more than sexual excess
Sowing more than vexing stones

Favourite haunts of depravation
Where the morning fears to tread
Covenant revere the sullen cain
Strike the tethered liar dead

Dark solstice fever burns in me
Like the tugging of my veins to feed
Ravaging Raven-Lust
Unbridled at dusk

9. The Foetus Of A New Day Kicking

I'm chaos international
The writing on the wall
A Lazarus in parable

A dark and sullen lullaby
Whispered softly as you die
Promising torments are nigh

Danger warning levels hissed out loud
I saw the silver lining hidden in a mushroom cloud
Now I'm reeling from the shock at ground zero

If yesterday you would have stood up proud
Then why tonight have you thrown in with the stoning crowd?
I'll breathe through the foetus of a new day kicking...

The foetus of a new day kicking

It's true that Jesus cannot save
I'm rising from the grave
To put my double cross to shame

A poison rush, a heart attack
A white assassin painted black
You'll fear this reaper coming back

Danger warning levels hissed out loud
I saw the silver lining hidden in a mushroom cloud
Now I'm reeling from the shock at ground zero

If yesterday you would have stood up proud
Then why tonight have you thrown in with the stoning crowd?
I'll breathe through the foetus of a new day kicking...

On a night like this
You laid the serpent's kiss
In this garden of Gethsemane
You played the traitor well...

In a dawn to come
I will blind the sun
To grant you pardon as my enemy

Before damning you to hell...

10. Rise Of The Pentagram

One dark afternoon
Like a shadow I flew
Through the rain that fell sick with lament

To this house of incest
For when we undressed
Blasphemies against Venus were rent

Though a sister removed
Her white body approved
The parade of my heavenly quests

Yet, all tongues are not true
Some are forked or askew
Like an uncivil serpent's at best

For ousted from Eden
I fausted all reason
Hook in mouth like Saint Peter Pan

To haunt fairy groves
And hot virgin coves
Where in the promiscuous swam

I elected lovers and rejected others
Mathistrisses that don't give a damn

But for those that still do
My deep interest grew
The rise of the true pentagram!

11. Under Huntress Moon

With the snow fallen thick
And bonfires alit
And shooting stars portents of rips
I ascended to spur
A mere glimpse of murmur
From her precious celestial lips

Be it sun to your moon
"Be it moon to your sun"
Together we promised to come
With a turn of the screw
And a slip of the tongue
We eclipsed one another undone

Through the mist, through the woods
With the night-wraiths I've stood
Atop murderous peaks calling you
On storm-lashed beachheads
Where the fisherman dread
The things your bewitchments accrue

Those deep creatures bring
Her cut diamond rings
A girl with a pearl necklace her
Advancing in fevers
Tsunamis and myrrh
Will she wreak bloody vengeance or purr?

She lights the skies
Dressed in silver scales plucked from the ocean
To spite her thighs
That Lucifer snuck inside
And with his pride
Enclaves were upgraded to Goshen
So paradise
Could shine from out her skirts

"I adorn myself at dusk
With ornaments to close the noose
A kiss as red as blood and cold as hell

My body glows with lust
Anaemic as the flag of truce
I raised at dawn to catch you in my spell"

With every twist I cannot resist her
Fertile female mind control
This wanton witch, white rapids sister
To whom I pour my wine and soul

From a copse of black yews
Where the moon was drawn through
Like a sword through a Gordian knot
She descended to me
Claiming swift victory
Over the heart I had near soon forgot

With every kiss this huntress whispered;
"Yield to my sweet embrace
One night of bliss". I could not dismiss her
Once her beauty shot me a darker face

You mesmerise my soul Diana
You mesmerise my soul

12. Temptation

[Heaven 17 cover]

I've never been closer
I've tried to understand
That certain feeling
Called by another sound
But it's too late to hesitate
We can't keep on living like this

Leave no track
Don't look back

All I desire
Temptation
Keep climbing higher and higher
Temptation
Adorable creatures
Temptation
With unacceptable features
Temptation
And trouble is coming
Temptation
It's just the high cost of loving
Temptation
You can take it or leave it
Temptation
But you'd better believe it

You've got to make me an offer
That cannot be ignored
So let's head for home now
Everything I have is yours
Step by step and day by day
Every second counts I can't break away

Leave no trace
Hide your face

Full of desire
Temptation
Keep climbing higher and higher
Temptation
And you can take it or leave it
Temptation
But you'd better believe it
yeah

Step by step
Day by day
Every second counts
I can't break away

Keep us from temptation [x3]
Lead us not into temptation

Trying to find it
Temptation
You've got to get up behind it
Temptation
Put your dime in the hot slot
Temptation
But it's a million to one shot
Temptation
You think that you're right
Temptation
Your gonna face it tonight now
Temptation
Give me a breakdown
Temptation
Because it's time for a shakedown
Temptation [x16]

[female laughter]

15. The Snake-Eyed And The Venomous

[Harder, Darker, Faster: Thornography Deluxe 2008 track]

They see me there
Their eyes are everywhere
Sniffing at the linen for the dirt
I feel their burning stare
That hate will later flare
And writhe upon their women full of hurt

Lace magic ink with venom, critics
Milked from infant teeth
Though scathing blows are so arthritic
When they're set on slow repeat

They know I care
Smell storm clouds in the air
Hissing at the bit above my heart
But though I dare
The dyed black route of splitting hairs
I favour not to tempt the poisoned apple cart

I feel two needles rising
Snake eyes are hypnotising
I know they seethe, despising
All that we possess

I feel two needles rising
The truth is always blinding
Their lies, unappetising
Toxins to digest

They breed nightmares
Dark horses of despair
Taking twisted courses in the art
And were I there
To bet my bones on grave affairs
I'd have their guts for garters from the start

I feel two needles rising
Snake eyes are hypnotising
I know they seethe, despising
All that we possess

I feel two needles rising
The truth is always blinding
Their lies, unappetising
Toxins to digest

It's not without hate to crawl flat in the filth
As other less basilisks fly
And brothers are clasped to the breasts of a sylph
As their royal loves slither to die
So shedding dead skin, working true colours loose
Renewing the red in their eyes
They coil like sin within thinning excuse
Cold-blooded to sharpen the lies

Uncivil serpents, race deceivers
Disfigureheads varnished with fevers
Snake-house creepers in our dreams
Of Eden, flee before we mean
To throw the worms out with the waters
Rife with hated spawn
And set a sword to whirl and slaughter
All vipers at the gates of dawn

16. Halloween II

[Harder, Darker, Faster: Thornography Deluxe 2008 track]

eins
zwei
drei
vier

Formulae ueteres exorsismorum et excommunicationum
Strigas et fictos lupinam credere
Metamorphosis lycanthropy
Possunt inquam

Daemon pellem lupinam
Quodam cauae
Arboris occultandum
occultandum [x3]

[Chorus (x3)]
Halloween
Halloween
Halloween
Go, Halloween

Metamorphosis lycanthropy
Possunt inquam
Metamorphosis lycanthropy
Possunt inquam

[Chorus (x3)]

17. Courting Baphomet

[Harder, Darker, Faster: Thornography Deluxe 2008 track]

Wishing in contempt of love
The righteous came to burn our forest
With hissing firebrands
For though we serve the gentle curves
Of our serpent-girdled Eastern Goddess
They thought they caught us
Kissing hearses in their land

Send away the pumpkin carriage
Blind mice in your head
Parade themselves like sacrilegious
Envoys of the dead
For in this house of the dark Madonna
Flesh will pleasure life
For free of sin we would dishonour
All that virgin sacrifice

Gut our city, slaughter all within
Save the gold that goes to God
Show no pity for we worship sin
Spare not the old nor lightning rod

We raise our devil horns
To those who sit on high
For down amidst the thorns
We lie

Tonight the black guards came to rape
And ruin those souls empathising
With fleeing far away
Thrown to the Tigris river curves
Of our star tiara-ed Ishtar rising
They thought they caught us
Courting Baphomet

Courting Baphomet

Gut our city, slaughter all within
Save the gold that goes to God
Show no pity for we worship sin
Spare not the old nor lightning rod

She walked the world
When the world was made to dress
In a perfect darkness
A murderess in flame
Nature curled, unleashed, unfurled
The crack of a whip on the lips of anger
Why would your holy order
Not be wholly slain?

Wishing in contempt of love
The righteous came to burn our forest
With just verses for the damned
For though we serve the gentle curves
Of our serpent-girdled Eastern Goddess
They thought they caught us
Pissing curses in the sand

We raise our devil horns
To those who sit on high
For down amidst the thorns
We lie

We raise our devil horns

18. Stay

[Harder, Darker, Faster: Thornography Deluxe 2008 track]

If this world is wearing thin
And you're thinking of escape
I'll go anywhere with you
Just wrap me up in chains
But if you try to go alone
Don't think I'll understand

Stay with me
Stay with me

In the silence of your room
In the darkness of your dreams
You must only think of me
There can be no in between
When your pride is on the floor
I'll make you beg for more

Stay with me
Stay with me

You'd better hope and pray
That you make it safe
Back to your own world
You'd better hope and pray
That you'll wake one day
In your own world
Cause when you sleep at night
They don't hear your cries
In your own world
Only time will tell
If you can break the spell
Back in your own world

Stay with me
Stay with me
Stay, stay with me
Stay, stay, stay, stay, stay
Stay with me

19. Devil To The Metal

[Harder, Darker, Faster: Thornography Deluxe 2008 track]

Polluting the honesty of Christ with poisoned wine
Laced with lines from the end of time
From the herald and the bugler

High voltage bolts the cellar door
Switch thrown at midnight's peak
To start the heart of a scarlet whore
Gauged infernally

A poetess in night's profane station
Threading lies like silver seas
A seamstress for an amputee nation
Wedded to depravities

Devil to the metal

Diluting the authority of life with sewer brine
Laced with grime from the spiral of time
Wherein spins cruel order

The big hand strokes the Little Horn
Not thrown for charity
To win the sins of the decadent, born
To wage eternally

Passion rides the great unholy
Ipsissimus of love's despair
Her ashen grin would shine, if only
Death would not sit smiling there
Her beauty freezes reason
Like Helen at the reins
Of the rampant horse Apocalypse
On the shore that it was made

Devil to the metal

She fucks at unknown angles
Bleeds her victims to the bone
And in their guts untangled
Casts her runic eyes of stone
She will violate the future
Annihilate the past
Paving way in butcher trades
The red brick road through mankind's arse

Abandon reason, life the veil
Darker seasons are released
Storm crows gather in black masses at the pane

Go to sleep beyond the pale
She is set to murder peace
Rome, Jerusalem and Mecca are aflame

'Under pregnant skies I come alive like Miss Leviathan
Dripping with the ripples of concern
All of heaven's eyes are fixed, as only my desire can
Tear them from the stars I start to burn'

Shat Out Of Hell

Eclipsing violent centuries
Like a dark scar over France
Enter the nascent Gilles de Rais
A warrior and a scholar
He fought for Joan Of Arc
Before she met with martyrdom in flames

Far from fairytale
A deathshead on his sail
A light that would not fail
Beneath her spell
But the crucifix was veiled
When his decadence prevailed
In a drench of red regaled
He was shat out of Hell

Shat out of Hell

Frozen in iniquity
A passion for awe in an age of grief
His wealth and power led him on
To the tainted gates of Babylon

Born beneath the howling stars
In a shower of golden Lys
A wolf-cub with the world between his sabre teeth
Torn between extremes of faith
The pious and the priests
He fed the Devil children like he threw his mastiffs meat

Far from fairytale
The coffin and the nail
Descending to the pale
Under the spell
Of alchemists who failed
To clench the menstrual grail
In a drench of red regaled
He was shat out of Hell

Shat out of Hell

Grown so morbid without war
The wine corrupted, nightmares spored
His Lord's betrayal, played no more
He beat upon the Devil's door

Demanding pleasures to replace
Joan Of Arc, her epic grace
Had set aflame his wolfheart with her truth
And when she died, his life of pride
Was lost to God and in his crimes
He turned to raising Satan with the proof

Soon nightly, unsightly
Offerings were made on a vulgar altar
And slowly, but surely
The darkness answered like a falling star

Far from fairytale
Insanity exhaled
A full-blown winter gale
Under it's spell
Innocents assailed
Were entered and impaled
In a drench of red regaled
He was shat out of Hell

Shat out of Hell

Perverse, seductive, cruel as sin
An egotist, he mourned
Both war and glory, schooled to win
Whatever bored imagination spawned

The Death Of Love

[Narration by Doug Bradley:]
Her penultimate sighs
Called softy on the kindling wind
Her saintly eyes filling with tears, lifting with truth
And then a golden flash like the onset of Heaven
Leaving her screams breaking my heart
And in the grip of fire
I knew the death of love

Where will you be when they tense for warfare?
What will you see with your innocence there?
Where will you be my darling?
Where will you be when they tense for warfare?

Where will you be when God is glorifying?
There we will be between the dead and dying
Where will you be my darling?
Where will you be when God is glorifying?

Prophecies and glory forge a massive disdain
For lying passive in the shadows whilst the enemy reigns
Devoted to the votive, holy standard above
'By command of the king of Heaven'
Came the death of love

Where will you be when they're vilifying?
How will they see when the truth is blinding?
Where will you be my darling?
Where will you be when they're vilifying?

Where will you be when the dark is rising?
How will you keep from it's terrorizing?
Where will you be my darling?
Where will you be when the dark is rising?

Burning was the sunset like a portent of doom
On the saintly iron maiden as she fell from her wound

But visions and ambition
Never listened to submission
And she was on a mission from the highest above
To Lord upon the slaughter
Like a sword through hissing water
She arose where archers sought her
For the death of love

The righteous death of love

Gilles adored her drama
Her suit of pure white armour
Blazed against the English in a torrent of light

And as they rallied onto night
A cancer fled his soul
Dissolving...

Framed amid the thick of fire
Aflame, a Valkyrie
She made him click without desire
And in his eyes she swam a Goddess

And even when they caught her breath
Her words would leave a scar
'For only in the grip of darkness
Will we shine amidst the brightest stars'

How will you breathe when their wheels are turning?
How will you know if the sky is burning?
Where will you be my darling?
How will you breathe when their wheels are turning?

Where will you be when Babel builds my fire?
Will you not flee and label me pariah?
Where will you be my darling?
Where will you be when they light my pyre?

Aligned with Joan in all
That was enthroned and divine
He swore to score the crimes
Jackdaws poured on this dove
Crimes he knew alone
Derived from minds of the blind
The church unfurled for murder perched
Upon the death of love

Framed amid the thick of fire
Aflame, a Valkyrie
She claimed the skies were lit with spires
And in his eyes she swam a Goddess

And even when she fought for breath
Her words would leave a scar
'For only in the grip of darkness
Will we shine amidst the brightest stars'

The 13th Caesar

[Narration by Doug Bradley:]
Oh, how my rampant desire
Ripped from the presence of God
Now hungered like a beast
For the knowledge of evil

When Joan was burnt
He knew malevolence
At the heart of all
A cold and jagged abyss bled of sense
The throne he earned
Through God's benevolence
Started his own fall
Clothing ragged dogma in his own magnificence

Here the stench, the gold events
The bold inventions of the will
Luxuries and splendours past the ken of mortal men
Every wanton bent desire went fulfilled

A Daemon sat upon the top of the world
Like a Herod over Genesis
They sang hosannas as his banners unfurled
Kissing terrors with paralysis

His brash canvas insulted the view
moving heaven and earth to please the
Tumultitudes, whom his strange retinue drew
To assert the thirteenth Caesar

The thirteenth Caesar
Ichor kicked inside his veins
The thirteenth Caesar
War was licked, for shame
The thirteenth Caesar
Sicker, but just as vain
The thirteenth Caesar
Gilles De Rais

When Joan was burnt
He knew malevolence
At the heart of all
He swore henceforth he would serve evil alone

Here the stench, the gold events
The insurrection of his will
Theatre and feasts past the ken of mortal men
Every wanton bent desire went fulfilled

A Daemon sat upon the top of the world
Like a Herod over genesis
They sang hosannas as his banners unfurled
Striking terror intro menaces

Suetonius and Ovid
Filled the moonstruck dreams
With the purple of Rome

His Venus of arena-blood was dead
And he was storming home

Tragic Kingdom

Here sat Babylon
Fattened by the purses of the worst and wrong
Where the decadent tastes of Hell grew strong
Like a curse upon
This tragic kingdom

Dusk descended like a final curtain
On this stage only death was certain
Singing through the turrets
Like a velvet serenade

Played near a grave

Sentries and gentry, afforded the bloom
Of a red setting sun and a bloodletting moon
Applauded, then accorded them
Portents of doom

Almost too soon...

They pissed upon the winds
That rocked the cradles
Laughing over those hovels grovelling to wolves
They kissed and sinned
Under overstocked tables
As the world outside grew sodden and mauled

Here sat Babylon
Fattened by the purses of the worst and wrong
Where the decadent tastes of Hell grew strong
Like a curse upon
This tragic kingdom

Gilles sat sipping damson absinthe
From a goblet made of bone
As lightning ripped and danced upon
The flagstones
Wayward fantasies marched on home

Now the treetops bowed to whisper
In a thin Disney veneer
They knew the howls so exquisitely honed
Were those of children, disappeared

They'd listened to the winds
Heard the murdered Abel
Re-christened in the stone jaws of Tiffauges

Where the list of sins
Grew beyond a fable
They now roared abroad, restless with debauch

Restless with debauch

Restless with debauch
This tragic kingdom
Would see God's angels walk
Away...

Satanic, enigmatic
His black magic was ecstatic
Megalomaniac in titanic displays
Dressed in the best
Wicked britches of the West
He cut a mourning figure in glorious swathe

But all his nightmares would come true
Drowning in a stream of unbounded pleasure

Here sat Babylon
Fattened by the purses of the worst and wrong
Where the decadent tastes of Hell grew strong
Like a curse upon
This tragic kingdom

Like a curse upon
This tragic kingdom

The moon bleared through the skeletal trees
Averting her face from congenital deeds

Thus eves grew murky, haunted, grieved
About this place laced with demon seed

Blanchet, a priest, his book of lies
Exonerated him from Gilles' crimes
Announced his fears, one night of sighs
A night for cursing nursery rhymes
In the light of the fire wrestling feckless shadows

(The track gets blacker for this tragic kingdom)

Gilles' frightening wealth, his tightening grip
On the weak and the rubies that his coffers let slip
Steered to near ruin in successive years
Of the most of excess and the best of it here
In the light of the fire wrestling reckless shadows

Sweetest Maleficia

[Narration:]
"I conjure you Barron, Satan, Beelzebub
By the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit
By the Virgin Mary and all the saints
To appear in person, so that you may speak to us
And fulfill our desires
Come at my bidding and I will grant you
Whatever you want, however vile
And the curtailing of my life"

He would rise triumphant
All done up
On a plume of raven wings
Trafficking with sycophants
Sharing his cup
Amidst other graver things

Alchemists and sorcerers stitched his head
With the stench of pitch and myrrh

The devout faded out but the pagan remained
The candles burnt low and still nothing came
Bearing golden secrets from a cold malevolent race

He would have his demon!
He would have his vice!
All save his soul was up for sacrifice!
Despite their raising not a single hair
Everything stank of witchcraft there

From the stained chapel to the statued lawn
In Caprineum on the lake
To the still lit crypts and the slit of dawn
Sliding down the towers, it all smelt fake

He needed answers not advice
Intending to devise
A lengthy train of torture for the fool
Who thought a seance would suffice
Or sighted, furred in dragonflies
The signature of Satan on a wall

Sweetest Maleficia

Planchette to Blanchet, from ghosts to a priest
Returning with a spider for the poisonous feast
The Italian astrologer Prelati, spinning sin

His fingertips were scented with
The tears from seraphim cheeks
Part glamour and a hammer
Cadaverous and glib
Commanding in a voice of frozen peaks

He would have his demon!
He would have his gold!
Out of control Gilles' soul was sold
Under mistletoe and the glistening snow
Kissing in the shadow of abandoned saviours

"So I shall conjure Thee demons of the Netherworld"

(From the banquet hall to the stable gates
A graveyard shift in tone
Sank upon the castle, like a papal weight
Or a deep philosophical stone)

The air was sick with trepidation
Despair and desperation
Then he fixed his covenant in blood
Now all was rich and tapestried
Fragrant wine to shitty mead
His new world opened with a claret flood

Time was right, this wretched night
To etch the circles clear again...

As a labyrinth of razors led a blind man to the stars
So too Prelati brought the dark
It's name was Barron, eyes like catastrophic tar
Imbibed with fire
They fed him shredded infants on an altar full of scars

Entangled in a dream
The mirrors full of steam
He scarce could see Joan's face reflecting through

His last attempt to grasp at God
Lay blackened in a holy fog
And now there were only devils to pursue

Gilles was wrapped in a velvet spell
Of Hell and her seductions

The assassinated days as a Caesar gone by
Barron, spitting acid, as his magical guide
Lit demonic pyres where once dying embers writhed

Sweetest Maleficia

Honey And Sulphur

[Narration:]
"So potent was the star under which I was born
That I have done no one in the world has done
Nor can ever do"

Praeclarum
Custodem
Ovium
Lupum

All Saints Day, the taint of rain
Blood and mud and thunder all the same
To those who close their ranks to Gille's men

Bricqueville, Prelati and De Sille
Creatures of the dark creeping up and down the countryside
Brittle angels out to pasture once again

Torture garden rules of thumb apply
To sacred flesh and the naked eye
Golgothic this erotica
Stinking of honey and worse, sulphur

So black was the magic in this tragical kingdom
That the superstitions grew
Wise to the wolves that surprised their children
Gagged in sacks and dragged back to

Tiffauges
It's roads now home to a beautiful stranger
Lifting her veil
Spinning her lies
Tender eyes, never-ending danger

It grows
A rose that chose death for it's bedmuck
Prickles in wait
Thanking her spies
Trickling thighs her only hiccup

And though she walks the forest trails
She's far from innocent or frail
She leads them down the path where darkness dwells

That night is rife with celebration
The tower sings
Where so much foul illumination
Strikes a lighthouse for the things
That slither and slather at the border of the pentagram
Mid sour dreams
A beauty pageant for the gathering damned
Of slaughtered lambs and tortured screams

Praeclarum
Custodem
Ovium
Lupum

Torture garden rules of thumb apply
To sacred flesh and the naked eye
Golgothic this erotica
Stinking of honey and worse, sulphur

So black was the magic in this tragical kingdom
In this castle of loup-garou
When moonstruck veins, inflamed, deranged on
A parcel of victims now tied to

Tiffauges
Engorged on the hordes of the anorexic
Cherubim forced
Naked and blind
A holocaust mind designed their exit

A libertine so grim
Sometimes tore them limb from limb
Slitting their throats
Pissing on graves
Jesus saved but the devil made him

Praeclarum
Custodem
Ovium
Lupum

Midnight Shadows Crawl To Darken Counsel With Life

[Narration:]
"Sometimes I beheaded them
with daggers, with poniards, with knives
Sometimes I suspended them in my room
from a pole or by a hook and chords and strangled them
And when they were languishing
I committed with them the evils of the flesh"

The evening air laps thick about
The stagnant moat that Tiffauges claims
As dusk now slips away
Where taught to run, the rotten tongue
Of a hotter Götterdämerung
Has started licking like a flame

Whispers in the dismal mist
Are full of crystal promises

Black rites begun in earnest
Ignite Hell's hungry furnace

Behold the bold inauguration of the darkside
Demonic passions climbing
Ill-fated stars aligning

Tonight these sights are guaranteed to feed the master
The tide of blood is rising
His gifts will be providing

Unmasked, the phantom lord De Rais
Haunts the furthest tower
Wherein death has sucked the hour

There, throttled gasps tantamount to foreplay
And drooling razors next to come
Unspool red secrets from the young

The moon grinned full, the games were chaste
When the children first arrived
Now midnight shadows crawl apace
To darken counsel with their lives

Flesh and ecstasy as sport
Are immortal vices of the highest order
Wherein devilry holds sway
Behind blind walls where these cockatrice squalled
Their songs of Necronomicon
Spoke out of Gilles De Rais

Each murdered son, each frozen rose
Handpicked, was gently fed
To the sumptuous one in black and those
Whose lives were thrown in with the dead

The candles lit, the stage was set
As it was in sainted days
When censers swung and banners hung
On the Siege of Orleans on the painted Seine

Now the castle floats in the drifting fog
Torn from it's moorings
Like a shipwreck dredged from Hell
As innocents entreat a shifting God
Their voices soaring
On a silver tide to heaven
On a knife edge as they fell

The blade would plunge in virulent arcs
Such wounds would stretch away
By the fireside, warmed to creative sparks
Of the monster Gilles De Rais

Gilded Gilles De Rais

Comets vomited
The restless bells of crime
Peeled back skin from broken bones
Of angels cut from the nicks of time

Festering faces with painted eyes
The prettiest kept to be thrust inside
Gaping necromantic from the mantle-side
Caked in kissed goodbyes

Days faded in decay
The stench of perfume lied
No horror in the glades of man
Was left for Barron to provide

So unique was the beat of his poisoned heart
And it's sordid, morbid crack
No further atrocity could possibly surpass
Unrewarded, bored, he turned his back

Darkness Incarnate

"Something thicker than despair
Rides upon the midnight air
The smell of blood, the taste of prey
We spy you hiding Gilles de Rais"

Under August swelter
After banquet and soiree
When spiced wine and song
Have further heated veins
To the ninth degree as tenacula
Hold another body in their sway
Gilles retires from the grasping fires
That will ashen the remains

Darkness incarnate

Demons in his semen
That once clung about the throats
Of children dragged from cellars to his rooms
Now permeate the castle
All who sleep dream of the goat
That dark eclectic harbinger of doom

Nightingales sang of tragedy
Whispers were made of blasphemy
Vain, insane, this brute aloof
Drew tainted veils over bitter truth

The stairs ran helter-skelter
His bedchamber besieged
By phantoms who sheltered
In it's furs, remorse
Sought to overwhelm him
Like a lantern of disease
That shone on rotten faces
Of those murdered out in force

Darkness incarnate

Fleeing ghosts so indisposed
To his Satanic love
Of children dragged from cellars to his feast
He rose, a carnal wind opposed
To those that sat above
Tearing out into the forest like a beast

The night wind sang of tragedy
Whispers were made of blasphemy
Vain, insane, this brute aloof
Drew tainted sails over naked truth

Madness clouded everything
Like a lycanthropic shroud
And through it's ghastly lineaments he saw
The trees become obscenities
Semen drip from every bough
As if he rooted Nature like a whore

Dryads tongued under skirts of leaves
Surrendering branches that slenderly pleased
The Mocking orifices and the forest on her knees

Then once besotted, knotted trunks now grew
Rotten, venereal, cancerous, blue
The clotting of his heart to a rank cantankerous tune

"Death is only a matter of a little pain"

Beneath the sallow moonlight
In a wonderland of pain
Gilles fled back to the castle
Terrified and drained
He sought his deep red velvet bed
And the sleep it preordained
Exhausted, forced into the dead
The creep of nightmares came again

Madness clouded everything
Like a lycanthropic shroud
And through it's ghastly lineaments he saw
Hundreds of slain children
Some came crawling disembowelled
To where he stretched out howling on all fours

Corpses tore at his legs and knees
As he clawed to the cross, begging reprieve
From a Lord that soared above the awful scene

He sobbed and wept, no voice was left
To scream, the dream was not drubbed yet
He heard the horrors hiss beside him,

'Herod, you'll regret...'

'Who hears the tears of nightfall?
Who steers the spears so spiteful?'

"Oh my dearest angels, go pray to God for me"

Ten Leagues Beneath Contempt

Awaking in a sweat
Forsaking pleasure for regret
Another night of blight had slowly passed
The morning skies once fresh and bright
Darkened down no near twilight
Once could smell the end of days were coming fast

Gilles wandered as in purgatory
Beyond the grave of his estate
Neither Heaven, Hell or peasantry
Were present save projected hatred

He knew suspicion, he felt derision
And grief like a sharpened stake
Pierce his heart, and now the start
Of his unknitting began to take

Vain glorious, a Lord, devout?
He thought his soul exempt
From guilt and doubt, there's no way out
Ten leagues beneath contempt

(He drank an ocean quoting Joan the maiden
A vampire's pious rant
His hot blood stank of devotion laden
With bias for love's covenant)

Awaking in a sweat
Forsaking pleasure for regret
His choired chapel sighed with his laments
As accusations reached a roar
Investigations breached the door
He put up nothing save his favours in defense

The Church stirred in it's Roman lair
The grease had long been spent
Now all tongues spat at Tiffauges there
Ten leagues beneath contempt

Just one falter
One misplaced deed
And Gilles would be undone
As he teetered on the verge of defeat

Profaning God's altar
Bursting in on evening Mass
He threatened there to crucify the priest

Drunk on fiery wine
With the storm lashing behind
He then threw this Philistine
To his foulest dungeon

And money owed or not
The Priest released or left to rot
His blatant sacrilege begot
A war machine of papal Rome

They came for him in mourning splendour
With the blessing of the Saints
His fawning grin in sweet surrender
A lesson in enforced restraint

He knew suspicion, he felt derision
And fear like a sharpened stake
Pierce his heart, and now the start
Of his unknitting began to take

He thought courts bought with golden crowns
Rich Bishops he could tempt
But traitor's gate was sought and found
Ten leagues beneath contempt

Ten leagues beneath contempt

Godspeed On The Devil's Thunder

"This is the moment I go to God"

Burning like derision on the prism of night
Still squirming from the sermon, those determined parasites
Meant to overpower and bedizen his light
He paced his tower prison with a dissonant appetite
The moon was black

Devil may care
Three times he'd glared before his judges
Darkening there
With a Wormwood mind
And a gullet of poison

Asked
He thought the court a farce
His tongue as sharp as glass
A bastard to the last
This truth assassin...

..tautened his claws at the ruinous cast
Flexing vexation at clerics aghast
In uproar he caused the cross to be masked
And the hex of exile from God's Kingdom passed

Back in the mirror, shattered vanity died
The curse even clearer on the sanity side
Banished from the lavish tracts of paradise
From Heaven's shored poured to the sore divide

The moon was black

Devil may care
Their thunder sundered all his veils
Thickening there
His beligerent pulse
To a sickening crawl

Yes
He'd fostered wickedness
Fed vipers at his breast
Inflicted death's caress
So now to suffer...

He'd burn, discern
That his second turn
Would last for eternity
In reckoning flames

That night his plight marched in demented Parades
O'er a rainbow of black magic scars
The blood ran to fear, turned to torment in spades
Deep in the sleep of this heretic, barred

The nightmares were livid, occultist, depraved
His epiphany struggled to come
But dawn found him there, redemptive, prepared
Like Christ to Golgotha, his face to the sun

All fears were smeared
When Joan had appeared
In a shower of tears
Last vestige of innocence

Yearning for her vision of divinity
Of her miracles and dreamt lyrical deeds

He would meet her at the pyre as the fire kissed
And together they'd climb to God, entwined in bliss

Devil may care
He awed the court with a sworn confession
Quickening there
His radiant death
And acute renewal

Thus
The end was glorious
He went like Jesus trussed
To shadow and to dust
At the stroke of seven

And
With thieves at both his hands
The Reaper of these lands
Wept with holy plans
As he choked to heaven

13. Corpseflower

"I have told you the truth and everything as it happened"

"All the evil that I could do has been accomplished
I am redeemable and I believe
The clemencies of God
And suffrages of the Holy Church
Have succoured me with much mercy
I have only ever wished to satisfy my desires"

14. Balsamic And Anathema

[Special Edition bonus disc track]

"No human power can stop the will of heaven from being asserted."

Worming through the mark
Of Ezekiel and Mark
Through the chapters of Honorius
Gilles, as in a trance
Screwed the pages up and danced
Courting something vainly glorious

He walked he gravest night
That decrepit final juncture
Of doom and negativity
Reeking of death
And the gloom of Stygian light

When suddenly, the faintest whisper!
A curtain opened in a painted vista
Moonbeams swept into his dream...
Balsamic and anathema

Balsamic and anathema

Prelati full of stars
Magical, ecstatic stars
That sparkled, no debacle sought to douse
His fiery omnipresence
Hissed at heaven, evanescent
He was there to thwart the burning of his Faust

The gates were prised, the phantom horses
Snorted, restless to be gone
With enchantment's eyes upon the door, he cried-
'Come with me now!'

Gilles balked, the thought of life
Accused and pursued
And overridden by morbidity
Saddened his breath
For those destined for his knife

Then suddenly - the strangest feeling
One that left the angels reeling
Atonement crept into his midst
Balsamic and anathema

Balsamic and anathema

Prelati, full of stars
This abductor of his heart
Promised him horizons free of pain
But all the grand designs
Magic sings and midnight wines
In the dream-world couldn't hope to swerve his aim

He would stay and face his slayers
Cardinals and courtroom players
Whilst Prelati must now flee before
The pure and azure dawn...

The gates were wide, the phantom horses
Snorted, restless to be gone
With enchantment's eyes upon the door
Once more he cried
'Come with me now!'

Prelati full of stars
Tried to pull him from the dance
Summoning his Barron to perform
But as the Demon rose
In sweet miracles of prose
And propaganda, came a proper bible storm

Lightning - grinning, froze
On this murder-site of crows
And from the scattered ashes stepped a sylph
The maiden Joan of Arc
Crept more beautiful and dark
A paradise, a cradle free of filth

She was chaste beyond all graces
The face of faith illuminated
More precious than Prelati's spell
A Goddess in a dream...

And trembling in her arm
Her eyes a thousand golden psalms
That glittered as on Christmas night
He wept like Hallowe'en

He held the scene, the poignant gleam
Of peace and great serenity
Close to his heart, her parting kiss
He slept to wake released in bliss

Into The Crypt Of Rays

[Special Edition bonus disc track]

[Celtic Frost cover]

Years of plead, behind the walls
Chambers and vaults, Scenes of fright
Unspoken Words, in pain and dread
140 lives passed his hands

Gilles De Ray's...
The perverted son
The holy man...
Into Crypts of Rays...
Into Crypts of Rays...
Into Crypts of Rays...

Alluring children for his masses
Robbing and buying young souls
Sacrifice to morbid demons
Satisfy his repulsive sexual lust

Gilles De Ray's...
The perverted son
The holy man...
Into Crypts of Rays...
Into Crypts of Rays...
Into Crypts of Rays...

"So this is for the morbid one,
The braveless and sick
Shivering laughter shrilled through the tombs
Sexual offence and perverted rites
Watching them limp and die...
Wizards and darkness, Gilles' dreams
Halfway came true..."

As a late medieval's French marshall
Unrestrained, with endless ambitions
Personal guard for Jeanne D'Arc
...the rising of his soul to god...

Gilles De Ray's...
The perverted son
The holy man...
Into Crypts of Rays...
Into Crypts of Rays...
Into Crypts of Rays...

Overdone Mystism and
Desperate Satanism
Are just one small step apart
There's no human scheme in the beyond...

Devil To The Metal

[Special Edition bonus disc track]

Polluting the honesty of Christ with poisoned wine
Laced with lines from the end of time
From the herald and the bugler

High voltage bolts the cellar door
Switch thrown at midnight's peak
To start the heart of a scarlet whore
Gauged infernally

A poetess in night's profane station
Threading lies like silver seas
A seamstress for an amputee nation
Wedded to depravities

Devil to the metal

Devil to the metal!!

Diluting the authority of life with sewer brine
Laced with grime from the spiral of time
Wherein spins cruel order

The big hand strokes the Little Horn
Not thrown for charity
To win the sins of the decadent, born
To wage eternally

Passion rides the great unholy
Ipsissimus of love's despair
Her ashen grin would shine, if only
Death would not sit smiling there
Her beauty freezes reason
Like Helen at the reins
Of the rampant horse Apocalypse
On t he shore that it was made

Devil to the metal

DEVIL TO THE METAL

She fucks at unknown angles
Bleeds her victims to the bone
And in their guts untangled
Casts her runic eyes of stone
She will violate the future
Annihilate the past
Paving way in butcher trades
The red brick road through mankind's arse

Abandon reason, life the veil
Darker seasons are released
Storm crows gather in black masses at the pane

Go to sleep beyond the pale
She is set to murder peace
Rome, Jerusalem and Mecca are aflame

'Under pregnant skies I come alive like Miss Leviathan
Dripping with the ripples of concern
All of heaven's eyes are fixed, as only my desire can
Tear them from the stars I start to burn'

The big hand strokes the Little Horn
Not thrown for charity
To win the sins of the decadent, born
To wage eternally

A poetess in night's profane station
Threading lies like silver seas
A seam stress for an amputee nation
Wedded to depravities

Devil to the metal

Devil to the metal....

Devil to the METAL!!!

Courting Baphomet

[Special Edition bonus disc track]

Wishing in contempt of love
The righteous came to burn our forest
With hissing firebrands
For though we serve the gentle curves
Of our serpent-girdled Eastern Goddess
They thought they caught us
Kissing hearses in their land

Send away the pumpkin carriage
Blind mice in your head
Parade themselves like sacrilegious
Envoys of the dead
For in this house of the dark Madonna
Flesh will pleasure life
For free of sin we would dishonour
All that virgin sacrifice

Gut our city, slaughter all within
Save the gold that goes to God
Show no pity for we worship sin
Spare not the old nor lightning rod

We raise our devil horns
To those who sit on high
For down amidst the thorns
We lie

Tonight the black guards came to rape
And ruin those souls empathising
With fleeing far away
Thrown to the Tigris river curves
Of our star tiara-ed Ishtar rising
They thought they caught us

Courting Baphome t

Courting Baphomet

Gut our city, slaughter all within
Save the gold that goes to God
Show no pity for we worship sin
Spare not the old nor lightning rod

She walked the world
When the world was made to dress
In a perfect darkness
A murderess in flame
Nature curled, unleashed, unfurled
The crack of a whip on the lips of anger
Why would your holy order
Not be wholly slain?

Wishing in contempt of love
The righteous came to burn our forest
With just verses for the damned
For though we serve the gentle curves
Of our serpent-girdled Eastern Goddess
They thought they caught us
Pissing curses in the sand

We raise our devil horns
To those who sit on high
For down amidst the thorns
We lie

We raise our devil horns

The Love Of Death (Remix)

[Special Edition bonus disc track]

So i shall conjure thee demons of the netherworld
Where will you be they tense for warfare?
What will you see with your innocence there?
Where will you be they tense for warfare?
What will you see with your innocence there?
Where will you be when God is glorifying?
There we will be between the dead and dying
Where will you be when God is glorifying?
There we will be between the dead and dying
Prophecies and glory forge a massive disdain

For lying passive in the shadows whilst the enemy reigns

Where will you be when they're vilifying?
How will they see when the truth is blinding?
Where will you be my darling?
Where will you be when they're vilifying?
Where will you be when the dark is rising?
How will you keep from it's terrorizing?
Where will you be when the dark is rising?
How will you keep from it's terrorizing?
Burning was the sunset like a portent of doom
On the saintly iron maiden as she fell from her wound

But visions and ambition
Never listened to submission
And she was on a mission from the highest above

For the death of love

The righteous death of love