1. THE GREY KING

The pit is vast as it is empty
And the emptiness is its draw
Paved on the footsteps of great minds
The columns of the kingdom stand tall
The mortar composed of buried hope and dead faith
Petrified philosophers stand guard at the gates
Adrenaline coalesces with lucidity
The void is not a cage
The void is a throne
The crown is covered in the blood of my former self
And his demise makes me feel nothing
I am asked to cry out for freedom
I am silent
I am told to report terror
I am silent
I am tasked to speak of dread
I am silent
If the world begs for a testimony
The world will be left wanting
Sinister warnings fall hard under a relentless gravity
The horrors of this place have grown benign and I am thriving in the muck
Ashes coat rusted skeletons of monuments made to dead ideas
My lungs are coated in soot and I learn to breathe fire
Not to exhale any sort of weapon, but inhaling inexorable truth
Kings wilt atop weathered podiums
Commanding a society of cockroaches that will not bow
Heavy crowns wear down weak necks
The sun no longer reflects on the gold
Majesty in all forms is dead
And will not ever be reborn
My sky is black forever
For my ceiling does not stop at the clouds
This universe is vast
Full of great useless monoliths
Suspended in dark matter
No stories to tell but the great withering of time
This universe is a graveyard
Coffins orbit coffins
Each corpse so convinced
The graveyard was made in tribute to them
This makes me feel nothing


2. THE GREAT CHAIN AT THE NECK OF THE EARTH

Fall into lucidity
And drink in the fear of disillusion
There is no solemn way to behold this
There is no way to escape the shock
The filter is decaying now and I see
That though He called us diamonds
These diamonds are covered in filth
The stench of our parade
Is no longer the stench of victory
The bodies I hung as trophies
Were my brothers
There is no glory in the death of men
Perceiving God I broke the souls of the fallen
Their final words never escaped my mind
At the peak of the monolith I saw
God fall and shatter into dust
But the dust did not dissipate in the wind
Nor was it washed away in the rain
His ashes would stain the valleys of my mind
The god I thought I knew only stood as an icon
The true deity would be found in the deepest trenches of fear
In the truest peaks of discovery
His image would be seen as true perfection
His image was beautiful
His image in the man with his foot to the throat of Mother Earth
The spiteful wretch reduced to a prototype
This planet made obsolete
Humanity unchained from the sinking corpse
Men standing as gods
Our legacy will not outlive our designs
And we will outlive time


3. MARK OF THE BEAST I: THE IMAGE (PRELUDE)

(Instrumental)


4. MARK OF THE BEAST II: SCION OF DARKNESS

Worship the gods of technology
Advancing the human race
Augmenting creation
Blind allegiance to our new masters
Cast away superstitions and doubts
Place our hope and faith in the bosom of man
This mortal creature destined to vanish
This limited mind, a nest of hubris and misconception
Let us feign control of our world and destiny
For in our feebleness we have attained omnipotence
Man, all-knowing, will lead us to truth
Man, who could not save himself, will save us

In his quest to defeat nature
He strives for the seats of the Heavenly Host
To be like a god unto himself
To be God

The illusion of transcending our mortal shackles
By means contrary to nature
Giving way to the corruption of a natural mind
That which knows no bounds
Bearing certain death and destruction
This is the mark of the beast
A symbol of subjugation and obedience
To the image of your true master
A fingerprint of decadence, ubiquitous
The scion of darkness, whose visage cannot be seen
By the eyes of those blinded by pride


5. INFINITE WISDOM

(Instrumental)


6. DESOLATE, IT MOURNS BEFORE ME

Light
Illuminates the sky
Vulgar rays spread like snakes slithering
Upon the fleeting clouds
The time has come
To tame the elements
And place the reigns upon nature
Hands reaching toward the heavens
To bring them down

A cabal of intellect gathers
Arrogant hearts and ambition fomenting
A plague of astonishment blooms

A bitter flower shedding putrid petals
Cutting the air in their salacious sway
They sing a whispered song, virulent
Heralding the demise of all things

The mental gifts bestowed upon My children
Lead to unceasing greed and destruction
Their machines facing the welkin
Babel's tower reconstructed

A bitter flower shedding putrid petals
Cutting the air in their salacious sway
They sing a whispered song, virulent
Heralding the demise of all things

Behold the stalwart figure of metal and wire entwined
An infernal image of mangled sinew and ligaments

An unsightly creature indeed
With this they aim to conquer creation

These gluttonous fools, feeding themselves with the blood of their brothers
Will watch the sky fall and demolish all that ever was

A beam of light shot into the sky
The fulgurant Judas kiss
A treacherous kiss once again

And like that fateful night of the past
Recompense is wrought swiftly upon their heads
They are but insects pushing against the celestial heel
Waiting to crush them into the dust from whence they came
The earth uprooted, the heavens torrent unrestrained terror
Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide

And their blood shall run on the streets for the dogs to lick
Slain bodies, carrion for the crows' feast

Now lays there the land, bereft of fools' mockery
Desolate, it mourns before Me

A bitter flower shedding putrid petals
Cutting the air in their salacious sway
They sing a whispered song, virulent
Heralding the demise of all things


7. ABOMINABLE ACTS

Shackled by greed
Herded like cattle, subhuman filth
Regarded as a means to feed corruption
Branded by the mark of Cain
A sign from God to reveal the fallen
A creation inferior

Lashed and flayed
Whipped and slain
Hearts of stone swallow living flesh
The Word to justify
Abominable acts
Their purported light makes clear
The depths of darkness

Centuries of abhorrence
Mitigated but slightly
The physical scourge
Gives way to mental torment
The icon of bondage resurfaces
With a different face

All of humanity now enslaved
By the ones who sit on mountains of gold
Peering below on the valley of peasants
The helpless, the powerless
Hearts corrupted and blinded by the illusion
That this life is measured by wealth and the material

In their eyes, we all bear the mark
Signifying our status
As fodder to be trampled upon
Goaded, prodded, processed

Fed into a cycle of servitude
Trapped beneath an impossible burden
A vain effort to satiate the gluttonous abyss
Of the ones who lust for power

The ultimate charade
The charlatans propagate
Faith in freedom
Amounting to unending deceit

A million miles from truth
The road forms a divide
A schism among us
Brother against brother
While they laugh down at us all


8. SCOURGE

We are the transgressors
We are the ones marked for death
Since the dawn of man
Steeped in sin we toiled through
Lifetimes of sorrow and ages of suffering
Led into darkness by the Serpent's tongue

By our own choices we lost Paradise
By our own volition we have trespassed Your law

Peerless destroyers of all we were entrusted with
Sentencing our hope to die with scornful arrogance
Time and time again
We are the killers

We deserve nothing but the flame
Our destiny to be cast away
Into everlasting darkness

Consumed and forgotten
For we were endowed with perfection

The immaculate forgone
To assume the decadent form of pride

We deserve nothing but the agony of abandonment
Nothing but the pain of the fire
The gnashing of teeth
And the weeping of the unworthy

There is nothing we can do
There is nothing we can do
There is nothing we can do
By our own power

Striving in vain to attain the divine
Only to fall short endlessly
Returning to the pit of despondency
The scourge born by our own hands

Yet, despite our shortcomings
You provide to us unfathomable grace
Perfect mercy to sustain the tainted race
And carry them to their lost country
Back to the paradise promised as an inheritance

Faith trumps our futile efforts to gain righteousness
Accept the life given to save us all
Thereby averting the path to damnation
Separation from eternal life
The justice we truly deserve