Cradle of Filth
Cryptoriana - The Seductiveness of Decay
1. Exquisite Torments Await...
Abandon hope all ye who enter here
For herein lies the path to sadness
The poetry of woe set midst the sweet lament of fear
Carouses in fantasialike spirits cast to madness
Here we pray
Severe, the day
Dies irae
Dies illa
Dies tribulationis
Et angustiæ
Dies calamitatis
Et misteriæ
Dies tenebarum
Et caliginis
Dies nebulæ
Et turbinis
Dies tubæ
Et clangoris...
Fresh meat now tests these jaws of death
2. Heartbreak and Seance
Before the wall is caved, our temple
Pressed upon the face of England we were suffering
To nothing less than the matter of a socialist test raid
Dagger in the peace wicked time disdained
Then empires saw much more to gain
The crown discounts are lost
Like a knot, count the cost
These numbers felt like water
The dead and dying on route to slaughter
Valen-times we've spined entwined
I am sorry that i left you here
In time i will find, the puppet from the other side
So keep a candle burning in your heart that is my shrine
Spilling tears fill a laboratory
Love's not responding beyond the pyre
The portent is promissory
Prevalence of this Seance in obeisance
To the spirits before Death's victory
The crown discounts are lost
Like a knot, count the cost
These numbers felt like water
The death and dying on route to slaughter
Valen-times we've spined entwined
I am sorry that i left you here
In time i will find, the puppet from the other side
So please accept my kisses through the whispers in the winter morn'
I suffer alone
So far from home watching you from a distance
A shadow persistent to mourn
No time to atone, you vow a renown
Beautifully craven you cut the black raven who's tower has flown
Spilling tears fill a laboratory
Love's not responding beyond the pyre
The portent is promissory
Prevalence of this Seance in obeisance
To the spirits before Death's victory
Winter seems far colder
Without you by my shoulder now this year
I strike at craven thoughts, stood fast
Fighter there, belongs to Christ
The preacher is over borders
And speech will crack upon the order
Hell-blessed I see her with no culture
This is where it ends how the wretchedness forgets
And I'm in the hands of the brat in the blackest night
3. Achingly Beautiful
Night
That fatal raven alighted
On the cusp of my bewitchment
The beast in the clouds had swallowed the moon
A silverback thundering across the cosmos
In silence now stars followed her tune
Winking from existence on the brink of chaos
I penned an open sonnet
To the pearly gates ablaze
As I gazed upon this angel
Intoxicating everything
The ball became her court
Her presence there electrifying
Candelabra fought
To tear themselves away
She was a flame, divine
My pathic call of duty, irrefutable
Her eyes, they paralysed me, froze the flow of time
A glimpse, so achingly beautiful
Fleeing from the manor
In the manner of this crime
We sheltered from the pelting
Helter-skelter of the skies
In the Greek gazebo
Speaking tragedian rhyme
Death would never settle
For one petal at a time
He would pluck the fucker!
Lo, this malleus eve
Is heaving to the pulse of souls
She was the game, sublime
A knight takes queen in ruby, indisputable
Then her eyes, they paralysed me for a second time
A glimpse so achingly beautiful
Drinking in her flora
This Aurora to the storm
I was burning in the furnace
Of a love that went to war
With ravenous desire
Fires lit the heavens for
Caressing in the rainfall
A less painful metaphor
For this hunger…
On marbled tomb
Breathless, cocooned
A long red dress shrouds
Like Ophelia, this Goddess
Mourning then crawls
Black velvet palled
To pass fervent lips
Betwixt her deliciousness
Miserere Mei Diva
Forgive me forever my bride
But a gift was delivered
However perverse
On that night you exquisitely died
Seraphina rise…
Arcane perfection
Her legend was etched
…to queen demon revised
A fell resurrection
Unparalleled in this world or next
Awaken, forsaken
By others soon taken as prey
Now you shall stand in the grandeur of love
A wonderland in which to play
The beast in the clouds spat back the moon
And arrayed in a crown of glittering cobwebs
She slid to her feet like a prophet of doom
Born to immortal darkness
As mortality slipped away
She was a flame, divine
My gnathic call of duty, irrefutable
Her eyes imparadised me with their wicked shine
A glimpse so achingly beautiful
Now she stirs the night just like the perfect Lorelei
As she spurs the dark horse foaming in my soul
Death is fleet, sweet, oft discreet
The beast in beauty’s mask
Her skies, bediademed, complete
Now freed of days grown overcast
4. Wester Vespertine
Today was spent in languor
Drifting through the fold
As midsummer vent its clamour
In cobbled streets a thousandfold
I bore cruelty from the sun
The jewellery that it hung
About me, God it stung
Like life’s betrayal
Now shadows lengthening
Hear the nightside sing
The promise of delightful things to come
Wester Vespertine
When the sun is in decline
Reddened skies underlined in purple
Exemplify cries, goodbyes are verbal
And bats carouse around the tree line
Daylight bows out, free and feline
Dusk comes so sublime
So wester Vespertine
Feel the rush of power this magickal hour
The heavens blaze, their flames devour
The smoke of ruins black against
A bled horizon, mystic, incensed
Nightfall is dressed in fantasy
Ethereal, the end of day enthralls
Voyeurs watching from the stalls
It enfolds the drear and drab
Lifts our hearts to sheer romantic
Pyromantic, necromantic heights
Of bright sensation
Feel the rush of power this magickal hour
The Heavens blaze, the angels cower
Wisps of sulphur at my lips
The abyss at kissed fingertip
Nightfall is blessed with majesty
This night will see indictment
For my needs extol
The virtues of excitement
This soul reigns uncontrolled
Sweet scents, the vents of Mother Earth
Have lent to my rebirth
Her perfume is perverse
And that’s the way I like it
Bethlem is opening
Her terrifying wings
The promise of its frightful things to sperse
And Hesperus will shine
Out foremost as stars climb
Dusk comes so sublime
So wester Vespertine
Feel the rush of power this magickal hour
The moon invades the vestal bower
Gas lamps flicker in devotion
Like fireflies on an iron ocean
Nightfall is best left to telestic needs
Crepuscular
This theatre is spurred
To drive the painted nails home
And let man’s blithe desires roam
About the city lit to please
The pretty bits this August eve
Revive our sore and tortured souls
Revive my mortared soul
Toward the end
Toward the splendour
Like Lot, the host gives up its ghosts
His gorgeous daughters now surrender
Lammas glamour
Hammered in the dying light
Like a glowing hot sabre set to clangour on the anvil
We’ll bang destiny to rights now
Wester, Vespertine
This is our time to taste
To chase, to embrace, to lay waste to the vine
The cup of fornication is a decadent red wine
Wester, Vespertine
When the sun is in decline
Reddened skies underlined in purple
Exemplify cries, goodbyes are verbal
And bats carouse about the tree line
Daylight bows out, free and feline
And dusk comes so sublime
So wester Vespertine
5. The Seductiveness of Decay
Silked like a ghost in infinite splendour
The moon illumes like a madness vendor
Lycaning hosts to a coarse surrender
Frightening most lest they offend her reign
Proletariat enslaved
In whoredom with Moloch
London run amok is Sodom bathed
In an eerie light and a sickening fog
This city is a beautiful spider
With a poison welling inside her
That subdues and loots her prey
A web to tarry souls compelling them to
Duly stray
Fantasmagoriana's on its way
This mist, carousing off the Thames
Its sallow tendrils bend
The will of many men
To morbid fascination
How, the full asylums howl
With madness on the prowl
And all the maidens bow
To the skeletal
Squalor King Cholera
Here the age grows more unholier
Careered, with fear
Beneath the veil of melancholia
Now the smoke stacks darken skies
The caress of death is on the rise
Its choking breath, romanticised
And dressed in gothic veneration
Funereal this bride
Wedded to the dead insid
Blackest magick, Whitechapel paved
Penny Bloods delight in
The tragic splay of rifled graves
And suicided spirit guides the circle is inviting
Evil dances under many guises
Pristine masks shadow terrible vices
Sins enhanced, Lucifer entices near
Here the age grows more unholier
Careered, with fear
Beneath the veil of melancholia
Now the smoke stacks darken skies
The caress of death is on the rise
Its choking breath, romanticised
And dressed in greatest expectations
Thin wings lay on the ground
Bound for the pound
Of the beckoning reckoning
Infatuation with the mysterious
Frights are writing better chapter and verse
Intoxication, hearts are not averse
To circus freaks and black waxworks
Those that the grace of God denied
Become divertissement to curb
The bitter taste from glittered lives
Modernity perturbs
Horror Victorianorum
Syphilitic, spiritualistic
Rot is set to stay
Horror Victorianorum
Phantasmogenic, psychogenic
Sotted minds are bled astray
(solo: Richard Shaw, Ashok)
Behind the grind of Imperialistic overkill
Industrious teeth sank deep into the red map
Workhouses, grist for Satanic treadmills
Spew offspring back intact
In fact far closer to collapse
And the pooling lamp of science in defiance of the Lord
Its hallowed tallow burning with discord
Is born of midnight trysts with Ressurectionists
Body snatchers, child catchers
The Necropolis built on top of this
Is an Empire fit for ghouls
Is an Empire fit for ghouls
Here the age grows more unholier
Careered, with fear
Beneath the veil of melancholia
Now the smoke stacks darken skies
The caress of death is on the rise
Its choking breath, romanticised
And dressed in cloaked ambition
Aberration
A mourning nation cries
6. Vengeful Spirit
A storm to break steeples is nigh
I feel it in my deviant pathology
The Autumn leaves no longer sigh
But instead hiss an virulent cacophany
Stricken in the dead of night
Fear quickens me to flee or fight
This otherworldly parasite
Who stalks my very dreams
Sickened by this atmosphere
Blood's slickening everything in here
Nightmares are hers to commandeer
And furnish with my screams
She seeks control
So disaster will follow me
Please free my soul
Before her darkness can swallow me
I tasted betrayal
I was a fool
I will never relent
I am agony sent
Vengeance in the still hungry sights of a ghoul
The snow and roses
Of youth have passed away
Yet still she haunts me
In truth I stay her prey
Further down the rabbit hole
I fall, feigning greater escapology
But drugs do nothing but extol
The here and now
And not her venomous ghostology
I was hers but chose
Another for my own
And everybody knows
Suicide is for the solo...
(Solos: Ashok, Shaw, Ashok, Shaw)
My loved ones swoon to her embrace
For them a tomb will soon encase
Their spilled remains, the cursed chase
Begins for me afresh
Adverse Venus of these rites
Hearse of perverse appetites
Her thirst, it worsens and invites
A creeping of the flesh
She seeks control
So disaster will follow me
Please free my soul
Before her darkness can swallow me
I tasted betrayal
I was a fool
I will never relent
I am agony sent
Vengeance in the still hungry sights of a ghoul
I tasted betrayal
Misplaced and cruel
I will never reltn
I am agony sent
Vengeance in the still hungry sights of a ghoul
In the still hungry sights of a ghoul
First a gelid whisper
Then the candlelight cavorts in sympathy
For where once it was murder to resist her
Paralysis of terror stills the urge to flee
The demon enters
Swathed in a fell bestiality
She, this vengeful wraith tormentor
I pray the time has come for Hell to set me free
7. You Will Know the Lion by His Claw
Purring, the sweet-tempered soughing
Of lucrative savannah wind
Stirs the great flotsam of clouds that are vowing
To usher the evening in
Affecting the set of the reckoning sun
From burnished gold to crimson hue
Before this night is quite sorely undone
The Devil is coming for you
Like a ghost haunting the darkness
Stalking the veldt
Where many kings were felled
A savage growling rakes this grassy vastness
Halting you in the tracks you've laid
To rule this fulsome world
Now silent as a wisp of smoke
Terror grips you by the throat
You will know the lion by his claw
Mistaking fake demeanour
Was your first and fatal flaw
Never will the hunter
Ever be the hunted
Here or evermore
Taking my arena
Brought this courted slaughter to your door
I am nature's great restorer
First order Carnivora
Fate and foe, no time to implore
Mercy for she has fled
Tail tucked between her legs
Circled prey, recant and beg
To me alone, this powder keg
Of teeth and jaws together
In a riot of adventure
I am Leonine and ten commandments
Cut deep for your death
Damnatio ad bestias
Through limitless whispering seas
Of redolent tropical plains
Whereupon mystery's blistery frieze
A silvering gibbous moon reigns
Aggressive, obsessive to snuff out your lights
I come a cold virulent grue
Blighting your guides and delighting inside
On the pride that is tiding for you
As a beast feasting its hunger
Under this spell
Rifles and fire shall not repel
Industrious machinations rent asunder
No miring me in traps well-laid
I'll not pale to unveil my Hell
You will know the lion by his claw
This violence is a plague of flame
Licking the brush to flush out game
A bellow of rage caged in yellow eyes
Sees evil life seized, unleashed reprisal
You will know the lion by his claw
Mistaking fake demeanour
Was your first and fatal flaw
Never will the hunter
Ever be the hunted
Here or evermore
Taking my arena
Brought this courted slaughter to your door
You will know the lion by his claw
Now hear the growing thunder roar
Damnatio ad bestias
The walls of brackish thorn have fallen
Batterfang and chaos
Quick to marshal, maul the fools
Who stand by shattered loss
Your shadow scatters westward
Toward the fleeing stars
As a new dawn feeds upon the skies
Hearldic, rampant, battle-scarred
Damnatio ad bestias
8. Death and the Maiden
I spy the spreading fear
That crawls wormlike beneath
This ageing mask of time
That grasps to call itself belief
So down here in the Valley of the Shadow of Death
To the best denomination I have taken
To show just what faith-tested means
Never seen the sun
Never been undone
Never thought her feeble screams
Would court such fascination
Never in a thousand years
I am the lord of the bored underworld
Her hand is pleasured in mine
Together we will climb
Past the pearly castellations
A wealth of treasures to find
We'll fly crows of ill-omen
Across a leaden sky
To red squares of Holy Roman
Catholicism in an eye
To deeply sow, where sorrow rose
Having all tomorrow
For our wedded union to impose
The world in misery succumbs to frost
Without her here I'm lost
The seasons absorb the cost
Together our paths crossed
Eros and Thanatos
One by one
Love's raised horns sound their sweet surrender
And one by one
Her defences fall, debris
My will be done
I shall storm the gates where fates defend her
And once I've won
Her heart shall belong to me
I saw her there
Gathering despair
By the light of the moon
On the Vale of Nysa
I walked the endless night
Before she pressed from me
The swallowed seed of winter's bite
Undressed Persephone
So down here in the Valley of Kings
Let this sticky situation spur on fertility
Come be my perennial Queen
Never seen the sun
Never been undone
Never thought her velvet ports
Would wean such masturbation
Never in a thousand years
Without her here I'm lost
The seasons absorb the cost
Together our paths crossed
Eros and Thanatos
One by one
Love's raised horns sound their sweet surrender
And one by one
Her defences fall, debris
My will be done
I shall storm the gates where fates defend her
And once I've won
Her heart shall belong to me
Hades
I've slept delightfully within these open arms
Plucked, I'm a magnet to your charms
Lost in a skeletal dance
I rent the meadow's earth
To embed her as my bride
This wond'drous light of life
That right the wrongs I've bred inside
Her mouth no longer plaintive
Those lips no longer dry
We waltz the great halls naked
Candlelit and oft obliged
To deeply sow, where sorrow froze
Having all tomorrows
To bathe in the savoured afterglows
To slave at the favoured crafts we know
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