1. INTRO / FROM THE FOG

(Instrumental)


2. DIMMED THROUGH THE SMOKE

The weight of loss is bearing down upon me
Time, the river, flows beyond all of its eddies
Unstoppable force, immovable motion.
Defenseless we are… Succumb

Joy is but a lightning strike
The rest are clouds of grey
Wind carries memories
Like dust

To collect only on the furniture in our minds
Life...and death
I know only sorrow
As those around me are whisked away
By the breeze of inevitabilty

Water and time
Drowning in a sea of what's next
Memory flickering
The only truth
Is to dream
What impulses teach us
Raw emotion pours into the melodrama
Of what our brain creates

But then
Awakening
Memory fading
Like ghosts in the fog
Like movement in darkness
Our eye tries to see
But there's only a flicker

Now, stand and try to live
Try to find the joy
Of a million sovereign moments
One by one like tracks
On a train that never stops
A dreamer who always sleeps

The leaf
Holds to the branch
By fibrous strands
Struggling to survive
It too falls victim to wind
It too falls victim to time
It too will wither and die
It too will only find joy
In its past

Struggle
If you will to survive
Try not to be swayed by the breeze
Time will claim its prize
The seconds the minutes the hours the days
Weeks and the months and the years
Time is measured in aeons
Not human life
Insignificance is man and our hopes

Earth
Is made of rock and stone
Not flesh and bone
And when life returns once more to oblivion
Rock and stone will remain
And reign
And should the sun explode
It will be welcomed
By rock and stone
Not flesh and bone
And recylced through cold space

Joy is but a lightning strike
The rest are clouds of grey
Wind carries memories like ash
After the ruins are smoldering

The smell...of smoke fills my nose
Again I can feel the wind at my back
Rain, appears from the grey
Trying to mix the ash with the dirt

A bird flies by
Caught in a daydream
Moving the sky
The sound is obscured by the breeze
A moment in time
A motion that's captured
Gently, it fades
An illusion that dims through smoke


3. STANDING ON THE PRECIPICE

The cold reaches
Into my bleak existence
Grabbing my scars
I alone can feel the presence
Or so has been fortold

I stand upon the precipice
Feel the wind blow my hair
The mirror defies me
The shadow envelops my spirit
What will I become?

The gods themselves have damned me to my fate
Of which I'm told that I was born too late
Perhaps the fire in my chest will flicker out
And then I'd fly to any shore to escape my presence here

"Oh shadow warrior try to fly
And then what haunts you will surely die
But if you go, who will fulfill what's prophesied?"

Fly… I fly… I flee… Away
Jehovah lies crying
Yet mountains move
Every step a spiral
They're hunting, destroying
The maelstrom...it churns
The elders know not
Yet the gods laugh

The mirror defies me
The shadow envelops my spirit
What have I become?
The prophecy is fulfilled
I am vengeance borne


4. HUMANITY (THE TRUE ART)

Putrid dreams of lucid flesh
Morbid scenes of testate rest

When the light of the day star shines
Your rule has ended
When the final dawn arrives
I am still man

Lurid rays of consciousness
Languished ebb of sovereignty

Woe to the Shadow-bearer
For impure is the soul imbued with frost
And the god dost hold the hammer

Children are we
Juxtaposed betwixt the ethereal imperium

Have no problem of evil--
Question the watchmaker's masterwork.
The fools of time will count the strokes
But upon the day's hand, death lies

Thy sculptor… thy creator… thy doom

Halogen stars far away
The gods themselves stare down
Ignite their laughter

Created in their image
But from whence did that image come?
Humanity is the true art
And danger is in nature

Stand above heaven, eyes lifted
To aeons beyond, where galaxies shiver
Grip the paradox and shake it to the ground
Where life still dwells, we perish not.

And as I observe what remains of this vision
I scowl at what compliance with tradition has allowed
And predict a new future to rise