1. AGE OF EXCUSE II (LIVE IN OBERHAUSEN 2021)

The stench of Zeitgeist
Is the incense of discarded shrines
As the corpses put on powder and rouge
So that the hoax can proceed, ever sidewards
A cheaped out incarnation into a shopworn sarx
The soul congeals into a grimy lump -
Substance of the world, dreary and pale
At the feet of a spirit detached

Between the grinder and the abattoir
Such are the landscapes of grief
Grayness and glitz
Glitter and gehinnom

Between tedium and fright
Such is the song of the nether world
The hissing of rats
And the jarring chants of angels

A sacrifice to the gutter gods
Squandered redemption, misplaced grace
As an ailing mole burrowing in Eden
Living breathing downfall

Between the grinder and the abattoir
Such are the landscapes of grief
Grayness and glitz
Glitter and gehinnom

Between tedium and fright
Such is the song of the nether world
The hissing of rats
And the jarring chants of angels

It's a land of sun gone down
In comical grandeur
A sluggish danse macabre
Hyenas waltzing about

Would a new flood please finally come
A real rain and an assortment of plagues
And when all is said and done
Even the Devil won't care enough to spit in the mud


2. AGE OF EXCUSE III (LIVE IN SKOPJE 2019)

Out of howling of prophets
And curses of the righteous
In the ivory halls
A new kind of champion is bred

Herostrates for the modern day
High on good conscience
A noblest of sufferers
On disinformation highway

At the end of the day it's the same old script:
Do you believe in victory or do you hail defeat

Those finaglers of justice
Expert wrights in deceit
Carvers of the crooked timber
And their finely tuned farce
Proclaiming anger and rage
Under the mortal threat it thrives

At the end of the day it's the same old script:
Do you believe in victory or do you hail defeat

Ersatz revolt
Ersatz rebellion

For a new world would come
Every once in a while
"Purer", "brighter", "clearer", "better"

And the last of misbelievers
Will be trampled in the greatest of marches
Toward the radiant future
Where sheep are promised fangs

And only after the graves are filled
With remains of dissidents
And the frame of reference is torched
Together with forbidden thoughts

Then, and only then
The disciple is relieved
The true believer has overcome the evils
Of engineering of dissent

At the bottom of things it's the same old script:
Do you believe in victory or do you hail defeat

Ersatz revolt
Ersatz rebellion

For a new world would come
Every once in a while
"Purer", "brighter", "clearer", "better"

Ersatz purpose
Ersatz alliance
Ersatz ideals
Ersatz communion


3. WITH HEARTS TOWARD NONE III (LIVE IN BRUSSELS 2013)

Threshold wanderers
Daath dwellers
Usucaptors in lands
of no hope and no grace

Preachers of the fall
Surveyors of the astray
In darkness and in ruin,
in gutters of ascension
Behold the Logos
begotten of death

From the midst of cold ash
comes the voice of the living god
Further down
to the roots of withered pillars
Through the scorched ground
And you shall know perdition
And it will set you free

Grey ash prayer
Severed from the unconscious
Perverse theodicy
Atrocious immanence

From the midst of cold ash
comes the voice of the living god
Further down
to the roots of withered pillars
Through the scorched ground
And you shall know perdition
And it will set you free


4. MDŁOŚCI II (LIVE IN LOS ANGELES 2022)

The Gardens withered and the Colossus perished,
embraced by the luscious winds of stagnation,
as a monument of the silent gospel
from a rotting foetus inside the womb of Gaia.

Risen by the hand of man, turning the pages of history.
Purifying, channelling the essence of a conscious, erected mud.

Our almighty new god, turning man back into mud.


5. EXERCISES IN FUTILITY II (LIVE IN LONDON 2022)

There is a style in total denial
A certain elegance of fear
Hesychasm is so much convenient
With the desert within ourselves

Stray dogs lead disciples of Oedipus
As the shrouds gently cover
Exquisite paroxysms of ruin
And well mannered choking on nothingness

Nether

The cracks in soma, psyche and pneuma
Are as one way mirrors
It's one well lit desert
And the pyres extend beyond the horizon
And cold flames flicker upon ashes of hope

Through hallways carved in a crystal
On to the uttermost parts of the pit
Jostling through cadavers of former selves
You would swear there's amusement in the eyes of the dead

Again, nether

A reward for the perseverant:
Unceasing howling of the heart
Bound to walk this path
Nether, again, nether - now and forever

I wish it was classic fire and brimstone
But clearly there is a very special plan
Paved with havoc and shattered virtues
As if there were any other paths

With every dream
The pyres grow taller
An enemy of trust
A misled scholar
Stray philanthrope
In vain endeavor
Walk this path
Now and forever


6. WITH HEARTS TOWARD NONE I (LIVE IN PARIS 2022)

Between the damned,
the pissed and the outright insane
Grand architects of failure,
sculptors of loss
No golden thrones to follow
No shrines of solace to seek

I shall erect myself over transience
I shall ascend over flesh
Steadfastly tearing through aether
I shall rise to the beyond
I shall reveal heights not yet imagined
I shall rewrite Summa de homine
I shall speak with tongues of angels
and I shall burn with pure light

I will burn allright...

On to rupture; bonds rearranged
Scorch the archaic remnants
and rip through primordial thoughts
On to diremption: self and kin
All glory and strength of culture
now null and void

No golden thrones to follow
No shrines of solace to be found
And only the locusts shall sing
at the end of the day


7. GROZA III (LIVE IN VILNIUS 2017)

Now I am become death.
Crawling, slithering along the edge.
Shattered splinters, frozen in an eruption of light.

Craving for stench of divine rot.
Scratching the bare core of hideous truth.
Wherewith shall it be received,
when the soule's precious vessel lies ruined and lost?

Now I am become death.
Pierced by those signals of transcendence.
Right at the 5 minutes of salvation.

The bitter blood of the Lamb.
Shattered grace. Ashen virtue.
The horror. The horror.
A precious jewel of His making.

And as the light embraces the wanderer,
as knees bend as thought is obliterated,
with the very moment that resistance has ceased,
now, I am become death, the enemy of man.


8. EXERCISES IN FUTILITY I (LIVE IN LONDON 2015)

The great truth is there isn't one
And it only gets worse since that conclusion
The irony of being an extension to nothing
And the force of inertia is now a vital factor

And there is despair underneath each and every action
Each and every attempt to pierce the armour of numbness
Burning bridges becomes a habit to support
And the front line expands like there's no tomorrow

I envy the maggots
Their stuff at least sticks together
Better than laudations of misinformed seers
And those are lengthy annals of shame that we work with

It's like dumping dead meat at the brink of Styx
With a barge that we made of what was left of Yggdrasil
After veterans of spiritual revolts were done with their armchairs
And I don't even remember which brink is which

The odour of sanctity is just refined stench of existence
Shining pearl of Augeas' crown pales in comparison

And there is despair underneath each and every action
Each and every attempt to pierce the armour of numbness
Burning bridges becomes a habit to support
And the front line expands like there's no tomorrow

The grotesque eagles of misfortune, well fed on thanatos, sit still
It's the dignity of scavengers at the ever growing garbage dump of life

There is something about the rigid posture of a proper, authentic blind
As if extended arms reached to pass his blindness on to others


9. FURTHER DOWN THE NEST II (LIVE IN WROCŁAW 2019)

I tak się właśnie kończy świat
nie hukiem, nie skomleniem
lecz szumem bełkotu ślepców
zapomniałych swego upadku

Oto krew świata, strumienie Ichor
Strugi ciepłej sliny na pyskach Hylikos

Oto istota kielicha z Mateusza
Kształty bez formy, cienie bez barwy
Słowa bez znaczeń, możliwości bez celu
Promieniejące życie


10. MDŁOŚCI I (LIVE IN NEUSTADT AN DER ORLA 2013)

Through the fields of scars and wounds,
shining with dim light of non-existence.

What tranquillity!
What sweet peace!
What inward serenity!
What supreme felicity!
An earnest of bliss!

To reach beyond the web of spiritual deceit
that mankind has been weaving for millennia
and face the most horrible truth of all.

Every single dream… shattered, trampled and lost.
Every single word… silenced forever and evermore.

Descent! Regress into prime, hideous, beautiful…
Descent! Regress into prime, hideous, beautiful nothingness.


11. EXERCISES IN FUTILITY III (LIVE IN WARSZAWA 2017)

We hold an honorary degree in natural science
For stratigraphy of rock bottom
The layers were aplenty, as above, so below
But mostly below

The research is vast, thorough and firsthand
And it's a broad array of sources

For the complete guide to spiritual asshole of the world

A tour in words, sounds and pictures
Of the true south of nadir

Through burial grounds for broken dreams and crippled souls
The graves are shallow
We would dig them up with our bare hands
Just to rise above for a split second
And see them basked in the light of a dead sun
Beneath the sky of shit
And then take notes
Meticulously

We would consume deathbed confessions
Create a language of fading words

For this night is without end

We would compute dynamics of grief
And logic of venom, and we would listen
As history is written on cold skin of prophets
With vulture claws soaked in rat saliva

For this night is without end


12. WITH HEARTS TOWARD NONE IV (LIVE IN ARNHEM 2013)

All hail reapers of hope
All hail the seer of confusion
To grind the sandstones of culture
And to reveal the true foundation
of terror and fevers

Under vigilant eyes
of watchdogs of psyche
Let loose by loving brethren
Jaws dripping with balm
of righteous comfort
To pour upon conflict,
Turmoil and friction

Now bite into the essence
and cut into fabric of life
Unearth the fragile construct
below instilled order

Never surrender
Never retreat
In this the weapons
are our very lives
Fuck hope and godspeed


13. FURTHER DOWN THE NEST I (LIVE IN MUNICH 2016)

Lost between the razor traces
Scratched confidence
Found comfort in shadows black
Taking darkness for granted

Left open for what comes unseen:
It's beautiful horror, it's wondrous seeds of doubt

Gazing into the abyss with the intensity of a madman
Desperately awaiting the day it looks back
Lest ye forget the monsters

Transgressing into a frigid soul
Nothing to expect, nothing to suprise
Shattering the precious illusion of potential ≠ 0

Further down the nest
Further down the ID
Cold, inert
Cold

Missed the distance, lost the trace
Complete
The Lord of Deceit rejoices

Cold, inert
Further down the nest
Further down the ID
Cold, inert
The Lord of Deceit rejoices


14. AGE OF EXCUSE V (LIVE IN TAMPERE 2022)

The gruesome caravan is crawling in circles
Around pillars of cold grey light
Pale horse is there, but the rider's away on business
And the lion went roaring somewhere else
It's a begging time for dissolution
The commodity of ultimate silence on public display
The living dead stare at the gaping void
Waiting for the blade to finally come down

Not just yet

There's still innards to be ripped out
And hanged between the sacred trees
Bones to be broken, eyes to be plucked
For the amusement of a drooling god

Born again in a tidal wave of filth
Amidst chants of suffocating angels
An offering to a ravenous idol
That'll take more pleasure in puking it out

Gnawed and spat out
Still good enough for lowbrow vultures
Torn and led astray
Fed scraps of hope until the banal end

A bargain pilgrimage to the heart of darkness
The stay got extended quite a good bit
View is always the same: sorrow upon sorrow
And the orchestra keeps playing same song on repeat

A canticle arranged for gnashing of teeth
Howling of hearts and cracking of spines
And there's a hundred eager razors
Underneath the conductor's suit

Gnawed and spat out
Still good enough for lowbrow vultures
Torn and led astray
Fed scraps of hope until the banal end

In this rotten excuse for a world
At the bottom of the dustbin of history
Let's just try and pretend
That our corpses still have some class

The cold light
The gaping void
The final silence
At the fingertips

The cold light
The gaping void
The broken cycle
Not just yet


15. AGE OF EXCUSE IV (LIVE IN MILTON KEYNES 2022)

Ground zero of transgression:
Whether ironic distance is true subversion
As it is carved in the structure
Of the system being opposed

Therefore the language of the scourge
Should be instilled in further discourse
The language of strife and hunger
In a state of relentless panic
Henceforth the struggle takes form
Of an absolute order, a total institution
The clandestine laws of the night
Should be exposed in broad daylight

Mocked by many - known by the few
The arsonists of perpetual aporia

Acknowledge the presence of a sinister side
That reaches far and wide beneath the surface
Acknowledge that there are aspects of self
Only to be revealed in burning, blinding hatred

The blades shall be sharpened
Upon gravestones of "kind" hearted
The measures shall be chosen
For maximum impact upon illusion of safety
The ordnance which will tear
Into the heart of daydream
Shall become the testament
Of the hopeless quest of prelest prophets

Acknowledge healthy confusion, the dirt behind the reverie
Unearth madness and probe into the absurd
Deconstruct with no promise of a restore pattern
And become free through the truth of the prelest prophets


16. EXERCISES IN FUTILITY V (LIVE IN BARCELONA 2019)

Blessed be the tailors
The masks are cut to fit

Blessed be the woodworkers
The crosses and the gallows

Blessed be the forgers of iron
And the spikes and the barbwire

Blessed be the stone cutters
It took a quarry to bury the dreams

Blessed be the misery, the filth, the discord and the horror
Blessed be the lies, the guilt, the fear, the woe and the betrayal
For these ones didn't need any outside source
For these ones come from within

And here it is
Grown from within
An invincible stronghold
Adorned with death

A suit of shining armour
Replaced the skin
And calligraphed sins
Are as coat of arms


17. AGE OF EXCUSE VI (LIVE IN AARBURG 2022)

Forever uphill atop the remains
Of missed chances, of hope and innocence
The withered bones of those who failed
But more so of those who didn't even try
Bursting through the barbed thickets
Sharp with guilt, deceit and shame
To the petty truths buried underneath
Layers and layers of drivel and mud

In this day and age

The litanies of overskurkens moral
Are the only prayers to be heard these days
And all those who dreamt about a True Revolution
Got distracted by hurting each other

What has to be done, has to be done
The human nature is what it is
We cover our eyes in a call to arms
And turn one edge toward ourselves

Arm in arm in this futile strife
Where cards are marked and odds are little to none
Hand in hand with fate worse than death
Relentless in discontent

In this day and age

Empires get wrecked
Principles get crushed
Saviors get crucified
History gets what?
History fucking gets over it all

And the assassins in rose tinted glasses
At the wrong end of the tunnel of light
Practitioners of paramount scorn
And those who'd rig moral compass rather than bridges

Behold the world and spit on it
The noble and the scum of the earth
Just out of some basic damned dignity
In this day and age of excuse

What has to be done, has to be done
The human nature is what it is
We cover our eyes in a call to arms
And turn one edge toward ourselves

Arm in arm in this futile strife
Where cards are marked and odds are little to none
Hand in hand with fate worse than death
Relentless in discontent

What has to be done, has to be done
The human nature is what it is
We cover our eyes in a call to arms
And turn one edge toward ourselves


18. EXERCISES IN FUTILITY IV (LIVE IN SUNDSVALL 2022)

Some are born without a purpose
Other than prolonged demise in ornate ways
Most of the time it's pathetic, quick and useless
And good neighbours don't bother digging up the graves

It's rows upon rows of kings, whores and pawns
And the storm is rolling
The vengeful and the bitter reach out for their fix
Rebels never realized that their angst was a mockery

Every empire
Every nation
Every tribe
Thought it would end
In a bit more decent way

It is an unlikely alliance of assorted failures
Various degrees of deceit, doomsday prophets
The clenched teeth, the vinegar down the veins
A stylish pit right next to Judas, Brutus and Cassius

Every empire
Every nation
Every tribe
Thought it would end
In a bit more decent way

Every prophet
Every ruler
Every seer
Will chew on this ruin
And repeat ad nauseam


19. WITH HEARTS TOWARD NONE VII (LIVE IN TOULOUSE 2019)

Have ye courage, o my brethren?
The signs are everywhere.
Some did not see it coming,
others refused to see.
I can feel it in the tingle of the air,
in the heartbeat of the earth
And I can tell that the storm is
coming all down on me.

Come redemption
As the litany of abandonment
rings through ruined temples
As the darkest night of them all
falls upon the scorched
home shores
As the great fervour within
is crawling in stasis and dirt

Earthbound,
yet striving to walk upon the wind
Always downwards - and toward
the farthest sides of the north

There come
the agents of change,
stiff and inert
Pillars of reason
and pillars of belief,
In the footsteps
of their fathers' virtues
Always downwards - and toward
the farthest sides of the north
There is the nadir
There comes the storm


20. EXERCISES IN FUTILITY VI (LIVE IN ALEKSANDRÓW ŁÓDZKI 2021)

As if you didn't know how it feels to lose
As if you didn't know how it feels to lose at dice with fate

At least have some dignity

As if it wasn't a lifetime spent on connecting the dots
There was no pattern
As if the irony was more than a defense mechanism
And we could actually laugh for a change
As if steel hooks in our backs were more than a nuisance
And we could actually feel something

Self crucified – missed the right tree
Tore the wrong eye out
The hissing of hellfire
Self crucified – missed the right tree
For this I have gained a victory
I burn as I ought to

As if everything was to be made right one day
Dreams don't come true for people like us
As if the gods were bored with peace in our hearts
And their fingers are itchy
As if we never broke people out of sheer boredom
And slept calmly among the wastes

And then we see bright and clear

As if we would be someone else
While mindlessly wandering through the mountains
As if we would be someone better
Expelling purgatory in Latin alphabet

Self crucified – missed the right tree
Tore the wrong eye out
The hissing of hellfire
Self crucified – missed the right tree
For this I have gained a victory
I burn as I ought to

As if all this was something more
Than another footnote on a postcard from nowhere
Another chapter in the handbook for exercises in futility