Fen - Monuments to Absence
Original Version 2CD Version 1. Scouring Ignorance 6:30 1. Scouring Ignorance 6:30 2. Monuments to Absence 9:24 2. Monuments to Absence 9:24 3. Thrall 7:23 3. Thrall 7:23 4. To Silence and Abyss We Reach 7:39 4. To Silence and Abyss We Reach 7:39 5. Truth Is Futility 9:35 5. Truth Is Futility 9:35 6. Eschaton's Gift 7:52 6. Eschaton's Gift 7:52 7. Wracked 9:08 7. Wracked 9:08 8. All Is Lost 9:42 8. All Is Lost 9:42 --- Bonus Disk --- 1. As Buried Spirits Stir (rehearsal) 7:04 2. All Is Lost (acoustic) 9:30 3. Gathering the Stones (acoustic) 13:59 total time 67:13 total time 1:37:46
1. Scouring Ignorance Winds of ignorance scour The barren, blasted plain of enlightenment Gaze deep into The festering kernel of surrender We never truly lived We never really grew With each wet and sucking breath With each draw upon the malignant teat The threads of meaning grow fainter The web of thought diminishes And lo - squatting in the void - black recesses of destiny Bloated with countless prayers Beseeched Soiled by debased and desperate libations And in the depths of this voidscape A weight of impeding woe draws near Crawling - begging - desperate for some release A crushing blackened reflection of our own dismal failure A vast eucharist steeped in the celebration of mediocrity Flail us Flail us all Rip everything we held dear to shreds And witness the collapse Unmake the very fundament of the self For it is of no value A scourging howl of unrepentance Hurls a freezing scree that blinds Eyes flailed and senses flensed Emaciated fingers spasm in the final throes of nervelessness Bereft of worth and purpose 2. Monuments to Absence Architects of what we sow Architects of what we reap Architects of what we know Architects of what we seek Look around Cast a bloodshot, stunned gaze upon a midden-strew woescape And know emptiness And know ennui and know the bitter sorrow of all-consuming abandonment. Resplendent Empty Megalithic These colossal, tragic monuments to absence That cast feeble shadows onto the lifeless wastes around them What once were shining temples Now debased by a fathomless hunger Strangled in decaying and warped spectres Of wisdom long since befouled The besmirched wreckage of prophecy Stifling...corrupting...choking... And again, I implore thee As stagnant, sanguine ichor fills my eyes As bleak tears stain a wretched visage As if holding a mirror to this vignette Guardian tombs to shepherd the meek Palatial vaults to avarice speak Glittering realms - hubris and disdain To ash and dust and waste - revelation's stain Look upon These sad bastions of emptiness These colossal, tragic monuments to absence Stood unmoving - a ghastly facsimile of stoicism Steeped in the echoes of pride now collapsed And growing fainter with each dying second towards blessed oblivion 3. Thrall Too late It is always too late To row back from the carnage wrought By the unfettered march of your own fucking hubris As gladly we build the pyres And heaped conceit upon conceit In a towering furnace fueled by vanity and scorn We watched the embers of rationality Spiral into the stained plateau of the sky Songs were sung And tributes were paid As the fires burned and the bodies were heaped We raised vast totems And eucharists of celebration To a new era of thought and worship From which there will be no deviance Banners unfurl across scarred stone Ice shines in the eyes of the guardians of a new credo Embers drift back to earth as chains Constricting... binding... Biting into pale skin Chafing to bloody sores As gladly we beg for more More pain - more punishment Rictus grins split broken lips that erupt blood CHoking us with the dorwning carmine finality. 4. To Silence and Abyss We Reach To truly hunger for something more Than that which is corporeal And stands before us in material resplendence Is the mark of the zealot shorn of reason. Nothing is too much - infinity a mere stepping stone No suffering is beyond enduring - for rewards that wait beyond No shred of dignity need remain - for godhead will transcend all Yawning oblivion splits open the lies Upon which this most base course of primordial logic Lies splayed, shattered and eviscerated Broken apart on the effluent - stained wheel Of cosmic indifference Of the void's disregard Your incoherent hopes deserve not even pity Your self-serving wishes are repellent in their craven worthlessness In craving for the grasp of oblivion's temptation Dignity is left as a sad and broken thing Stripped and ashen, left to wither A tattered banner of foreboding - a warning to those yet to come Stinking blood pours forth on a wave of prayer Feverish, babbling, debasing What is it that you seek? What do you desire? Desperately clutching at the threads of ashen dreams In the depths of a child-mind grasping for purpose Nailing hopes to a rotting mast of threadbare desire Orbiting a dead star of ignorance To silence and abyss we reach. 5. Truth Is Futility Lifetimes spent as the lurching ranks of the blind Hunched, rag-draped, with cold hands gripping tight To the stooped shoulders of those in front. Stained and sodden with the filth of hopelessness Mouths leak with the drool of the lost Drowning in an acid fog Footsteps press upon the heaped carcasses of those gone before Any vestigial hopes of revelation Blasted by the corrosive, searing poison And stunted, malformed limitations Of our own pitiful senses. And what will we do When the wretched and terrified infant That curls within the core of our being Stands before the lectern of reality? In the glare of truth's withering courtroom A whimpering wraith, stripped of all bravado Naked, pale and afraid, in thrall Cowering before the implacable lesson Of the brutal judgments to come. Driven back to the stagnant trenches of dogma and derision we shall be With yokes made of blackened timbers strapped harshly to whip-shredded backs As our vertebrae creak under the weight of imposed illusion Our mouths work in silent prayer to those who pull tight the curtains Sealing forever the tomb of awareness to a feeble chorus of welcome Cursing the futility of truth, decrying the glare of revelation. 6. Eschaton's Gift Open wide thine arms And welcome dissolution into thy embrace - into thy soul A very universe of needle shafts spearing into thy essence Shearing... unmaking... dissembling The bliss of extinction travels on seas of agony For what more can the last tattered vestiges of consciousness demand? What else can await the scions of reduction? Than the shredding vortex of extinction From pain, we derive finality - and from finality, release. We placed our hopes in a gilded cage of unreality Little more than the crushing, iron-shod shackles of purest ignorance Bereft of guild, absent of thought The very basest, reductive reasoning of the mentally stillborn Begging for solace in the endless corridors of a feeble fantasy. Eyes glazed with the desperate narcotic gleam Of a stunted mind grasping in dependence Infantile mewling and whimpering shame pours forth Reaching with tendrils of a child's yearning For the dopamine surge of oblivion's grasp In forlorn defiance the shrieking agonies Carried by the reality of violent obliteration And so it comes. The end It comes on trails of fire and plateaus of carrion Sown in soils trammelled with malediction's venom Howling absence A hurricane of negation Open wide thy throats And scream... and scream... and scream Tracheas red raw, vocal chords split and shredded Revel in this damnation For which we begged and pleaded Craved - as opiates flooding a rotted, dying cortex. This is what we prayed for For this is our gift 7. Wracked It rises within like a wave Again A surge, a storm, a coruscating pyre Pitiless and unmerciful This agony shows no relent Freezing stanchions bury far And paralyse Every segment of perception broken apart Unmade, rent, dismembered A remorseless tide brings naught but havoc To wage war on any semblance of the real self And this void-cold pulse grips Clutching hard - crushing, suffocating Eyes widen in growing horror Skin pale, drenched, sickened Sodden parchment encases shivering remnants That thrash in a turbulent maelstrom of defective matter Shuddering and bewildered Assailed by every sense rendered in coal-black poison Ripped slowly apart, piece by piece Unmade - unrecognisable Pitiful is the degraded residue that remains Lurching in a forlorn and sorrowful half-life. The wave is unending A remorselessness without succour On your knees, weeping for release Face pressed against the hot ash of the earth Crushed and spent Forgotten and lost Reduced to naught But cinders adrift on winds forged from the breath of the dying 8. All Is Lost With trembling, thin hands I reach And peer beneath the apocalypse veil To alight upon waste and loss and ending Overwhelming the remnants of senses so frail The architects of desolation Lies in muddled heaps and jumbled ranks Within soils of regret Within soils of lament Screaming a song of mourning to the empty halls Of a sky stripped of all life and meaning. Too late now to rail at what is Long ago sown were the seeds of this bitter harvest So eager was a selfish spirit To cast its soul to the pyre And bleach its world to monochrome Reap now thy legacy Revel in the hollow shell On my knees on a plateau of ashes Scooping forlornly at the dead soils of lost dreams Clawing at the ruins To dig back to a time that promised so much Now a pitiful and faded spectre dangling from the gallows All has been surrendered to the maw of the void Charnel gales of decay and hopelessness consume the senses Revel in the hollow shell Reap now thy barren and cold legacy All is dust, desolation and failure All is lost... all is lost... Lyrics in plain text format