1. SEEDLING DIRGE

(Instrumental)


2. CANCER OF BLADES

The Madness festers... more potent than ever before
Ancestors... those I once adored
Bear witness to their sons!

The blasphemies I beheld...the soil in which I dwell
The cradle burns as tinder to this Hell
And still they are blind to what they have done...

Once my fecundity was wisdom
But soon only tears filled my glade
Serenity no longer binds me
I've sprouted a cancer of blades.

Too long I have slept...dreaming of better days
Too long I have wept... while the world fell to decay

The blasphemies I behold... False Gods poised to consume
An ocean of frozen souls - an eldritch doom

The earth pines for a Panacea to its misery.
All Mortals must perish before the prophecies come to be...

This is your fate.


3. FLOWERS TO THE FURNACE

The fires of the civilized world...sparkle in the evening shade
The comforts warm the creatures She made...
Leeches form the webs...that provide their peace
Cities borne of desires and caprice...

Like Flowers to the Furnace
Beauty ebbs away
Wonders put aside
Thrown to yesterday.
I remember when
Times of better men
Paradise denied
Never to return again.

The modern world no longer has life or death
Only addiction and the fevered dreams of a purpose to fulfill...
It must be what they've always wanted
To surrender their will
And keep the world so still... so still...
(And kill the world...kill...kill.)

(Immolation...)

Burning the cradle of the earth helps them fall asleep
Burying themselves in falsehoods too deep.
Progress is the call that has led to this
Forgetting who they were in the name of bliss.

Like Flowers to the Furnace
Consuming everyone
Nothing ever grows
Nothing can be won
I remember when
Before they drank the chemicals
So long ago
Now forever condemned.


4. FAMINE STORM

Darkness descends from the firmament
Shredding winds sever the lifelines
Unbound in torment – these victims of sentience
They mourn the scattered fragments of their designs.

These are the remnants of a fragile civilization
Terror takes the reins in the fate of the storm’s manifestation.

Oh, see them wither in the wake of a carrion rain
Worms erupt from the soul to lay claim to the grains.

Corrosive waters fall to drown the vermin
Mortals perish alone in rusted enclosures
Sinking – the undertow begins
Such fallible creatures cannot hope to endure.

The stentorian call of thunder
Awakens me to the true nightmare
Cyclones harrow through the headstones’
Sundered cityscapes in despair

Long ago, they prayed to Her
To guard crops from malignant swarms
Now, wreathed in a cloud of locusts
I watch the defilers waste away in the famine storm.
The famine storm.


5. DEAD SYLVAN PRAYER

(Instrumental)


6. DEMETER'S RECKONING

Once upon a time…
When I seeped with wisdom
Nestled deep in your earth
Nurturing mankind from its birth
Your weeds have borne steel
And I weep for your hunger
As your forces grow stronger
It is I who remember your crimes…

Ignorant…
To the blasted fields and wilted air
Complacent…
To a fallen future and a fate laid bare
And you would gouge your own Mother from within
To beget dust and skeletons.
I watch you betray yourselves…
And She is too withered to care.

Once upon a time…
They beseeched me for guidance
Groveled on their knees
For the wisdom of trees
Now I reap their disease!
Their pitiful defiance
These dregs of science
In sorrow and hatred entwined…

Decrepit crops unsought by mankind
Scarecrows laid bare for the starving soil.
You would choke willingly upon your Mother’s ashes
And rue in millennia of Reckoning


7. OCEAN SCORN

Bathed in brine, drowned by time
A place where the titans submerged
Downtrodden seas, home to scores of debris
Where Mother’s nightmares converged.

Choked upon salt, embalmed in silt
Erosion gnaws at the shores
A maelstrom of tears where all hope disappears
Horrors from the gulfs below…

Sediment in the wind, corruption within
Vessels will sail to their deaths
Painted by oil, the wellspring despoiled
Devouring denizens of the depths.

When the waters reject your tongues
The famine will be complete
I will drink your remorse as your bones feed the shores
To nourish my cancerous roots and replenish the seed.


8. FEVER MIST

(Instrumental)


9. WILLOW'S EDGE

Surely they must know that the end is near
The locusts breed, infesting eyes and ears

Civilization lies in ruin beneath a cold sun
The tempest has torn through the world
And my harvest time has come.

Starvation is your fate
Your ignorance prevailed, and now it’s too late.
One last sacrifice for a withered womb
Her body shall be your tomb.

Extinction is on the rise
An offering…before the whole world dies.
One last genocide upon the Willow’s Edge
Upon the Willow’s Edge…

Come ever closer and be purified
Absolution is obtained through suicide.

Expiation to feed the fields
Coffins forged in factories of steel
(Your) senses too deadened to feel the pain I feel…

My Harvest Time has come…
The world will come undone…
The reaping has begun…
One last offering – let it be done!
So alone… in my bleak eternity
So alone… I must find serenity.

It’s the end of all their dreams
They never heard their Mother’s screams
I bring an exit from this world, so obscene
As I reap this Sorrow Seed!

I grant the release from their suffering… the suffering of ignorance.
I bring them back to the soil… back to innocence…

So alone… in my bleak eternity
So alone… There is no serenity


10. REAPING REQUIEM

[Part I: Violent Fecundity]

A gift for humanity
My violent fecundity
The Harvest Time has come to be
I lay the world to rest.
Mortals pleading for release
It’s all for the best…

Castigate… the foul flesh of a despotic race
War… feel the blade’s embrace
There is no love that remains for this unworthy disgrace.

No… there is no future anymore
You are but husks of what you were before
In my shadow, a procession falls to nevermore.

Grown is the Sorrow Seed
Requiem resounding as they bleed
Mortals pleading for release
The Reaping must proceed…
Suffer… for the transgressions and neglect
A pestilence of voracious insects
The salt in the Earth abjures; you shall never resurrect!

Failures… in the eyes of all creation
Cenobites of a profane invasion
There is no salvation; Humanity has chosen extermination!

[Part II: Glamour (the Others)]

Illusions once pacified men into reverence
When the Gentry protected the forests
How I miss the voices of the Others
The victims of spiritual severance –
Banality – now doomed to rest.
Once upon a forgotten time…

Men feared to tread in the dark
Their laws meant nothing to the Others
Now, reason is their crime
And they have left their mark.

The Glamour is shed to reveal
The world’s ugliness to be all that is real
I call upon the thorns of the hedge
To join me in mourning and slaughter

By the grace of the Willow’s Edge…

[Part III: Silent Slaughter]

(Instrumental)

[Part IV: Heralds of Ash]

So…
Her blades will till the wasteland
(Her) hatred tends the flames
No longer bound by mortal men’s will
The stars are ours to reign!

We are the Heralds of Ash
Into blackness let this world be cast.
Annihilation of the weak
To grant them the solace they seek…

The sands of time have fallen
And the Chaos is crawling.
This is all that remains
Fettered roots are my veins – the earth is mine to reign.

[Part V: Respite]

And so, as the cradle comforts the bones
I stand alone.
This guardian can finally fade away
Know that even as my colors fade to gray
I am filled with respite to share this wedding grave.