1. |
The Adversary
03:48
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Teeth in the maw
Of the abyssal darkness
Of the unempty tombs
Soon to overwhelm the world.
I am the creature of our forebears’ revelations,
I am your holy one, hollow to the core.
I stretch forth my hands for the children of Ammon.
I am the “I” at the eye of the storm.
Rest now, dear ones, in my wisdom —
I am the end.
Scalding iron,
Scarlet bedewed.
I embrace the smiling infants,
And render them ash in my heart.
I am the howl of history’s hindmost,
I am Gehenna, stumbling ‘cross the sands.
I am the idiot enshrined as oracle,
I bear an eye bound to my outstretched hand.
The disaster you fear
Is not the disaster you should fear.
Let us be clear:
When we wither
The blight was birthed of our seed.
The disaster you fear
Is not the disaster you should fear.
Let us be clear:
When we burn
The flame was kindled within.
The rain
Called down by this sacrifice
Poisons
The very soil we’d hoped to save.
I am the creature of our forebears’ revelations,
I am your holy one, hollow to the core.
I stretch forth my hands for the children. Amen.
I am the “I” at the eye of all storms.
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2. |
Until You Bless Me
05:00
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Dawn breaks,
Still I cling to you.
What is your name,
Wretched sentinel of truth?
What are you —
Lion, lamb, or lucid dream?
Your touch destroys,
But hath your word formed the earth?
Betrayal suspected,
I am pursued across the sands
By my brethren —
Frothing in rage to do me down
With burning books,
Broken bottles,
And fettered souls.
I seek your succor.
Am I in turn betrayed?
Sweet liar, lord and liege, my phantom holy man.
Your heel I cannot bruise, but yet I will hold fast. Yes, I will hold until you bless me.
The sun
Rising now like the eye of God.
No respite,
No release from your hallowed hands.
You may cripple me,
Yet I will not yield;
Though I hear
The pounding of my kinsmen's feet drawing near, for I have been betrayed.
Sweet liar, lord and liege, my phantom holy man.
Your heel I cannot bruise, but yet I will hold fast. Yes, I will hold until you bless me.
Angel of unknowing — dash my soul upon the stones of true wisdom.
My lord, make me lame if you must, but set my spirit free.
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3. |
Son of Perdition
05:03
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Rotten from inception,
Condemned from my birth.
The shopworn blade of damnation’s plow
Breaks fresh soil again.
Faithless father,
Turn your face to me!
I cry to you,
Howling, engulfed
By an almost
Indescribable fear
Thrust upon me — tearing through me —
Of total depravity!
You are ruthless, and I am torn
Apart at the hands of heaven’s host.
Forced into the light — another hapless reprobate.
No respite, no coddling for the cursed.
Abominations on the left hand, rank horrors to the right;
“Behold!” the midwife cries: “The day of the LORD is at hand!”
Spirit aborted, the flesh yet issued forth:
The son of perdition, offspring of lies.
The falcon is loosed,
From the falconer’s hand,
But it can no longer hear his voice.
Visiting undeserved death,
Falling again and again and again
Upon the unsuspecting flock.
The day of the LORD is at hand.
The teeth of the father rend my soul,
A saturnalia; a feast on the damned.
My spirit is consumed —
My flesh a vessel for vanity,
Forever condemned by this fear.
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4. |
The Unbeliever
04:26
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The streets of this shining city on the hill
Are choked with pills and the corpulent corpses
Of the children we claim to love,
Their impossibly bloated bellies so incredibly empty.
Charlatans all —
Purveying our certainties,
False binaries
Strangling soil and soul.
Totalizing
Narratives failing,
Reason unravelling.
We try to turn from the end,
Blithely bloviating,
Death proliferating,
Still prevaricating —
We strap ourselves to the tracks.
One more pathetic palliative
For this permanent terminal disease.
Hopeless down the gullet: a fruitless ward against the void —
The howling emptiness — the absence of all meaningful belief.
Here, you are returned a flag instead of a son.
When you cry out for comfort here, you are handed a gun.
Would that we could raise the least among us and make him king.
Our voices rise in a chorus from the corpse pile as we mindlessly sing.
Let this fount
Of baseless condemnation
Flow ceaseless from our lips.
Legalists
Spewing the edicts
Of unnatural law.
Give us Barabbas.
Give us the lies that give us rest.
Give us Barabbas,
Thieves for saviors, unfit to the test.
Give us Barabbas.
Give us the lies that we know best.
Give us Barabbas,
And watch the sun set on the West.
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5. |
My Brother, My Burden
04:44
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Let us weep
For obligation,
We, the callous,
The cowardly.
But are we so bound
By tired tradition
That I must break my very spine
To bear us both?
My brother, my burden.
We sought salvation:
We found undoing.
In righteous indignation
We both fell
Down into a reeking mire
Of fruitless recrimination,
Cherished guilt, muddled rage;
Devoured and diseased.
Our hollow faith a quagmire, our callow creed a lie.
Pinned beneath the fire of a killing canon, hung by strangling blood ties.
We were as an ox gored on its own horn, our love gutted out by pride —
A hollow, heedless, hell-bound husk I was forced to cast aside.
All our best, besotted heresies — these lies, compounded over lifetimes.
O most beloved heretic — how can you be lost forever?
Still you claw at me,
How can you not see
The vessel we drank from
Is cracked now, and empty?
I am undone —
You fell by the wayside,
I am the favored son…
My brother, you bastard.
Can I ever let you go,
And escape the cold demands
Of class and kin, of soil and sin —
Can I loose the grip of your hand?
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6. |
The Solace of Vipers
03:41
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You have given us stones
And the venom of serpents
When we asked you for bread
And a drop of water
To moisten our infant tongues.
Our teeth are broken
Along with what remains
Of our innocent hearts.
The solace of vipers
Takes the stead of a father’s love.
We cried out for meaning (hope) —
You answered
With a tongue cloven in two
By fangs of hopelessness and hate.
We begged you for beauty
Instead, you gave us the killing floor,
And the machinations of minds
Shaped by the void.
Dare you turn your eyes to the barren desert floor,
To the piles of bones all bleaching in the sun?
Frail walls built of stones you gave as sustenance…
And I am terrified of my own hands.
No more ragged voice cries out,
Silence claims the wilderness.
The pitiful remains before you
No word shall come to resurrect.
So we wept tears of poison
And gorged our
Bodies on the ashes of your empty empires.
The milk of the worm’s tooth
Is the wine of our common cup.
You fed us on stones —
We built a wall,
You then turned and condemned.
Oh hollow father,
May this hymn haunt you in hell.
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7. |
Calling Fire Unto Flame
08:51
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I leapt from the upper room
At the apex of the temple of our most high god,
Licked by the tongues of the flames
Set upon the souls
Of a few more deluded evangelists.
We tumble to the same fate,
Sundry paths to the same scorched end.
Come, children of Abraham!
Bastard brood of Isaac and Ishmael:
The grave's besotted concubines.
Our blood the same,
Spilled in field or desert sun,
Or on the streets of gold
I tumble toward below.
Oh, damnation!
Bitter marrow of my bones,
Calling fire unto flame.
In the beginning,
Carved into my pliant soul,
So now it shall be done.
Regret, stretching moments into days,
Life had only just begun.
We have become
As a mist in the morning sun.
Our father,
From the heavens we fall —
Toward our terrible
Inheritance.
I could not keep my brother,
The other could not keep your law,
And here we spiral together
At the end of this ancient dance.
Will we be but blood and ash,
A slurry of the damned,
Or does some respite
Shine up through the cracks at last?
Condemnation —
Can your legacy
Be ever broken,
This heritage of death?
Condemnation…
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Laement Los Angeles, California
While Læment are undeniably an extreme metal band, their music resists easy pigeonholing. Traces of influence from Paradise Lost through Tom Petty appear in their diverse yet coherent debut, Holy Man. Thematically, the record deals with civilizational hubris, intimate loss, and broken fundamentalism, providing a timely examination of the fissured façade of the West. ... more
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