Cradle Of Filth

CRADLE OF FILTH

MIDIAN (2000)

  1. At The Gates Of Midian
  2. Cthulhu Dawn
  3. Saffron's Curse
  4. Death Magick For Adepts
  5. Lord Abortion
  6. Amor E Morte
  7. Creatures That Kissed In Cold Mirrors
  8. Her Ghost In The Fog
  9. Satanic Mantra
10. Tearing The Veil From Grace
11. Tortured Soul Asylum

CRADLE OF FILTH

MIDIAN

1. AT THE GATES OF MIDIAN
Instrumental

2. CTHULHU DAWN

Cthulhu dawn
Spatter the stars
Douse their luminosity
With our amniotic retch
Promulgating the birth
Of another Hell on Earth
Shadows gather poisoned henna for the flesh
A necrotic cattle brand
The hissing downfall pentagram
Carven deep upon the church doors of the damned
But no pass-over is planned
A great renewal growls at hand
And only when they're running
Will they come to understand...

So ends the pitiful reign of Man

When the moon exhales
Behind a veil
Of widowhood and clouds
On a Biblical scale
We raise the stakes
To silhouette the impaled
Crowds...

Within this kissed disembowel arena
A broken seal on an ancient curse
Unleashes beasts from the seismic breach
With lightning reach and genocidal thirst
Mountains of archaos theories
In collision as at planetary dawn
Apocalypse's razorbacks
Beat wings on glass as thunder cracks
Unfurled across a world hurled to the black

Cthulhu dawn

Shatter the glass house
Wherein spirits breathe out
Halitosis of the soul
From a reeking abscess
Plague of far righteousness
All fates hang in the balance
Mocking crucified dolls
An inquisition ours
When the Sun goes out our powers
Will extend throughout Heaven like Asphodel
As they have for countless lustrum
In dark Midian accustomed
To burning effigies of our enemies well

So begins the sibilant world Death-knell...

When a corpse wind howls
And awakes from drowse
The scheming dead freed
Of gossamer shrouds
We gorgonise eyes
Of the storm aroused
Red...

Blinding time
All lines dine on this instance
A melting spool of beggar, negative frames
The skies teem alive, to watch die
Mankind hauled to fable in vast tenement graves...

Cthulhu dawn
Cthulhu dawn
Cthulhu dawn.

3. SAFFRON'S CURSE

Through arcades where shimmering snowfall
Lay in state with the sad and damned
A rent lament barely flung above a whisper
Drew Me like a ghost to the haunts of Man

I found Her tempting fate between Her wrist and razor
A kindred spirit in a graveyard
Beneath the stature of a colder saviour
Mist hung like thieves wreathed in scant arabesques
And through the chill earth it bedewed Her drawling breast

Like a come dream true under etched glass spent
Making love to the beautiful dead

She has sinned and severed Heaven
And in its vulgar sight
Two figures writhe, but one silhouette
Extends its fingers to the light

"Gothic towers tottered on Her heels
As She fled asylum grounds
Committing hard crimes to soft cells
Where now another's screams resound"

From the gaspings in Her passing
Six feet under of beneath frayed gown
When Her hands pointed to midnight
In a white stained chamber bound

I swept Her from the abyss of another dementia
Freeing Her soul from the letters of fate
To take the reins of pleasure
Now nightwane mirrors freeze in seizure
At the glimpse of charmed pins in Her thighs
Ballrooms filled with black cats scratch
Out of spite and playful eyes

Pricked as a Witch Her stitches itch
For familiar lips to lick them dry
Whilst the dark regrasps, for if She asks
The Sun forsakes the rite to rise
And is the first to discern, that this Angel's return
Is a vengeful call on grace
For even martyrdom backs from its suicide pacts
A leap of twisted fate betrayed...

The scars will last until the stars
Caught in Her train bewitched
Fall into line and yield the sign
That Dawn is born is to their eclipse

For Our Inhumankind
Comes an underdog-day Sunrise
Rippling with fire like femalediction

I splintered Her coffin and lay on the floor
Of a vault with Her clasped as the moon hugs the shore
What treachery this that She breathed no more?
Christ you bastard!

I wished Her back but the dead adored Her
Even wild winds sang in chora for Her
Saffron from my heart, from the start I swore
We'd be together more...

Creation froze with the triumph of Death
But still She stirred and awoke bereft
Of concern save for the aeons left
To lead the darkness...

She schemes of growing power and the lengths sucked hard to get it
I dream of being God but ever living to regret it
Our fecund nature decrees that Jesus wept come for
The Devil on Her knees

To grant Her lows a remedy
And mine desire's wish
To taste thereof of Heaven's scent
As sick and twisted as it is
For Her corset laced with arsenic
Hides snake curves within Her midst
Whilst Her halo of white lies supplies
Her temple to what God forbids.

4. DEATH MAGICK FOR ADEPTS

Come distortured artists
Bitter things seek meaning
Even if they're madness to behold
Once forbears to horizons
Where the dead stayed dreaming
Now nightmares waken souls
That fear the living's toll

Goya, Bosch and Brueghel
Three times moonwise stain thy graves
For words alone are at loss to trace
The face of today's inhuman wraith

One half adrift in the vast abyss
Of despair and misery
The other a mask of rich red lips
Whetted by the fevers of belief and greed

All damned in this inferno
Where even Virgil averts His eyes
From the black mass mutual gang rape
Of Caesing hands and forced divides

Trespass these seven gates
To a world bloodlet to shades
Where Seraphim
(Falling on deaf ears) bleat
Of their cold and coming Master's race
In the sewers of Babylon
Stillborn to a trough anon
Chimiracles will hatch like plots
To dredge faecces to pearl their cross

Enter Penteholocaust!
Five Aeons past, yet stull Man grasps
At final straws to save His cast

His Lord is a leper we shall not want

He betrayed us with white lies
His acrid pall of the tomb
Reminds us how we rot inside

Gutted like fool's paradise
Glutted on cruel appetites...

Holding court to chaos
Folding to far graver arms
A downfall fatal to all resounds
As orgies peak in self-centred psalms

And Nature screams Her sufferings
Under bowed and cankered wings
A bleak scorched Earth necrotica burning
Like the robes we've torn from Her

She begs Us lay Her pain to rest
Lest We are left with nothingness
Save for Her stripped and ravished flesh

And if Her fate is not a portent of Apocalypse
Then the comets that graze nightskies
Will surely cleanse of wrongs and reichs
When you and I and all else dies...

It's rotting down
This carcass Maggotropolis

Interpendant as worms to the grave
Allah's true name is naught
Christ cannot save
Locked in a waltz of evermore frantic steps
Spells of regret...
Death Magick for Adepts

Be prepared to fulfil prophecies
The glorious fall of a sin dynasty

Gutted like fool's paradise
Glutted on cruel appetites...

"We've woven hearts a thorn arbour
Left tear-streaked reason upon the shore
And bereft of compass, star or more
Set out for this World's end
Few at prow, most slave below
Painting coal a perfect gold
But for all it's worth, the engines slow
Dead in the brine again
Come cabin fever, sodomy on the bounty
Prey to phallus seas
That hiss and foam to douse disease
A storm roars on the way
Blacker than the Ace of Rapes
Dealt out by Death in darkwood glades
Our Ship of Fools, all boards handmade
Sinks, dashed by seismic waves..."

5. LORD ABORTION

I was born with a birthmark of cinders
Debris cast from the stars and Mother
A ring of bright slaughter, I spat in the waters
Of life that ran slick from the stabwounds in Her

Dub Me Lord Abortion, the living dead
The bonesaw on the backseat
On this bitter night of giving head
A sharp rear entry, an exit in red
Lump in the throat, on my come choke
The killing joke worn thin with breath

I grew up on the sluts bastard Father beat blue
Keepsake cunts cut full out easing puberty through

Aah! nostalgia grows
Now times nine or ten
Within this vice den called a soul
Dying for resurrection
I dig deep to come again
The spasm of orgasm on a roll...

I live the slow serrated rape
The bucks fizz of amyl nitrate
Victims force-fed their own face
Tear stains upon the drape

I should compare them
To a warm Summers day
But to the letter, it is better
To lichen their names to a grave

Counting My years on an abacus strung
With labial rings and heartstrings undone

Dub Me Lord Abortion, the living dead
The bonesaw on the backseat
On this bitter night of giving head
A sharp rear entry, an exit in red
Lump in the throat, on My come choke
The killing joke worn thin with breath

Horrorscopes My diorama
A twelve part psychodrama
Another chained I mean to harm Her
Inside as well as out
A perverts gasp inside the mask
I'm hard, blow My house of cards
All turn up Death, Her bleeding starts
In brute vermillion parts...

Now I slither through the hairline cracks
In sanity, best watch your back

Possessed with levering Hell's gates wide
Liberating knives to cut Humanity slack

My ambition is to slay anon
A sinner in the hands of a dirty God
Who lets Me prey, a Gilles De Rais
Of light where faith leads truth astray

I slit guts and free the moistest faeces
Corrupt the corpse and seize the choicest pieces
Her alabaster limbs that dim the lit carnal grin
Vaginal skin to later taste and masturbate within

"My heart was a wardrum beat
By jugular cults in eerie jungle vaults
When number thirteen fell in My lap
Lips and skin like sin, a Venus Mantrap
My appetite whetted, storm crows wheeled
At the blurred edges of reason 'til I was fulfilled
Whors d'oeuvres eaten, I tucked Her into
A grave coffin-fit for the Queen of Spades
She went out like the light in My mind
Her face an avalance of pearl, of ruby wine...
Much was a flux, but the mouth once good for fucks
Came from retirement to prove She had not lost Her touch
I kissed Her viciously, maliciously, religously
But when ONE been able TO best separate the THREE?
I know I'm sick as Dahmer did, but this what I do
Aah, aah, aah-I'll let your sleep when I am through..."

The suspect shadow where they least
Expect My burning grasp to reach

The stranglehold, the opened arms
Seeking sweet meat with no holes barred

Rainbows that My razors wrung
Midst Her screams and seams undone
Sung at the top of punctured lungs
I bite My spiteful tongue
Lest curses spat from primal lairs
Freeze romance where Angels, bare
Are lost to love, bloodloss, despair
I weep, they merely stare...
And stare and stare and stare and stare.

6. AMOR E MORTE

Her bouquets are wilted
Too long has She slept
Their cruel red mouths darkened
To bowed silhouettes
I saw in a new moon
With Her scent on my breath
But then all too soon
Came the hunger for flesh

I held Her in eyes like necropoli
Laying Her on a tomb with a view
Lighting Her from Her feet
To the stars in Her hair
Drove sweet blood to Her throat
And My lips parted there

(In the tone of splintered bone)
She screams benighted
My limbs ignite
A carnal carnivore
On all fours to go...

An ebon Nemesis
From torture gardens of Dis
Having never breathed an Eve
As far narcotic as this
Two spellbound hellhounds
Hearts pounding loud
Racing Heaven out of focus
Under quicksilver clouds

"God is maimed come let us prey..."
To Lunar deities that pave deadways
Twixt the living and the grave
Amor e Morte
To cast our feral shadows there
We made Love bleed on a Deathbed shared
Where, begging Me to feed
To best be Were...

I licked Her wounds and ate Her rare

Argentinum-spurred
Her wanton words incurred
A sin-ridden tongue
To open trading in fur
Never were those gates of pearl
So rubbed to their cusp
Never were the Worlds above
So bitten with the bestial...

Seraphim fell like guillotines
Giving gracious head
Instead of harking prophecies
And how our brothers sang
Amor e Morte

In the thick evergreens
Theirs was a chorus for raucous souls
Shifting shape and lifting napes
To commemorate
Erotic stains
Amor e Morte

Unfasten thy masque
Come skyclad to my arms
Leave thy gown a dark pool at thy feet
I yearn musky valleys that no Man hath seen
The chill keen of stars
Over Yew and deep wooded ravines
A hidden meridian
Where Midian may be...

In black antlered glades
Encunted in this forest Goddess
She whispers My name
I buck under flames
Animal nitrates
Howling through my veins

I ride riptides that wrest and writhe to the fore
New lusts eclipsing lips
That brought me to this verge of War
With inner beasts unleashed
To feast, fuck and run
Rampart in chase of She-wolf pacts
Forged on heat with setting Suns

I love the night
It would murder My soul
Should I ever fall blind
For though thy flesh haunts
I keep also in mind
The stampede of clouds
From Dusk's predatory sky

Purple-versed like the funeral hearse
That first turned thee over to My...
Unbridled kiss when I found thee in mist
Dressed for the sepulchre
My Demon bride...

"God is maimed come let Us prey..."
To Lunar Deities that pave deadways
Twixt the living and the grave
Amor e Morte
Ours was chorus for raucous souls
Shifting shape and lifting nape
To commemorate
Erotic stains

Amor e Morte

Amor e Morte
Amor Amor Amor
Amor e Morte

Amor Amor Amor
Amor e Morte.

7. CREATURES THAT KISSED IN COLD MIRRORS
Instrumental

8. HER GHOST IN THE FOG

"The moon, she hangs like a cruel portrait
soft winds whisper the bidding of trees
as this tragedy starts with a shattered glass heart
and the Midnightmare trampling of dreams
But oh, no tears please
Fear and pain may accompany Death
But it is desire that shepherds it's certainty
as We shall see..."

She was divinity's creature
That kissed in cold mirrors
A Queen of snow...
Far beyond compare
Lips attuned to symmetry
Sought Her everywhere
Dark-liqoured eyes
An Arabian nightmare...

She shone on watercolours
Of my pondlife as pearl
Until those who couldn't have Her
Cut Her free of this World

That fateful Eve when...
The trees stank of sunset and camphor
Their lanterns chased phantoms and threw
An inquisitive glance, like the shadows they cast
On my love picking rue by the light of the moon

Putting reason to flight
Or to death as their way
They crept through woods mesmerised
By the taffeta Ley
Of Her hips that held sway
Over all they surveyed
Save a mist on the rise
(A deadly blessing to hide)
Her ghost in the fog

They raped and left...
(Five men of God)
...Her ghost in the fog

Dawn discovered Her there
Beneath the Cedar's stare
Silk dress torn, Her raven hair
Flown to gown Her beauty bared
Was starred with frost, I knew Her lost
I wept 'til tears crept back to prayer

She'd sworn Me vows in fragrant blood
"Never to part
Lest jealous Heaven stole our hearts"

Then this I screamed;
"Come back to Me"
I was born in love with thee
So why should fate stand inbetween?

And as I drowned Her gentle curves
With dreams unsaid and final words
I espied a gleam trodden to earth
The Church bell-tower key...

The village mourned Her by the by
For She'd been a witch
Their Men had longed to try
And I broke under Christ seeking guilty signs
My tortured soul on ice

A Queen of snow
Far beyond compare
Lips attuned to symmetry
Sought her everywhere
Trappistine eyes
An Arabian nightmare...

She was Erzulie possed
Of a milky-white skin
My porcelain Yin
A graceful Angel of Sin

And so for Her...
The breeze stank of sunset and camphor
My lantern chased Her phantom and blew
Their Chapel ablaze and all locked into a pain
Best reserved for judgement that their bible construed...

Putting reason to flight
Or to flame unashamed
I swept from cries
Mesmerised
By the taffeta Ley
Of Her lips that held sway
Over all those at bay
Save a mist on the rise

A final blessing to hide
Her ghost in the fog

And I embraced
Where lovers rot...
Her ghost in the fog

Her ghost in the fog.

9. SATANIC MANTRA

Arch angel dark angel
Lent me thy light
Through death's veil
'Til we have heaven in sight (7 x)

Arch angel dark angel
Lent me thy light.

10. TEARING THE VEIL FROM GRACE

Biblical choirs soar beyond veiled light
A swansong for ravens trapped flapping in night

A tragic yet magickal fall from grace
Too awful to taste for the led and the chaste
Those whose long fetters are addressed to all saints

Free shining souls torn from God's given Reich
Defiled, reviled, exiled from sight

And Hell knows we sought victory
Chancing the leash
But when bad die were cast
We were cast down to die
A steeple of needles thrust into our eyes
So scholars might say we were blinded by pride
Like the sin of Our Father
Whom in Isaiah and Midian thrived
Regaining His sights for the storming of skies...

And after descenturies have crawled, vilified
Our dark harkened day on spread wing now arrives

For eternity is a coprohagic
Backward figurehead
Gorging on Her own bitter end
And We have eaten shit
Until we're close to addicts
No grime is running out
For us to make amends

To retake what once was lost
To exalt our throne above the stars of God

"To throw our fuck into gates and guts
Of a severed neverland
Where we, the damned
Once pleasured ran
Like seamen from a phallus sea"

Atrocious oceans must be crossed
To exalt out throne above the stars of God

The thirteenth sign of the Zodiac climbs
Cowled and scythed to snuff the sunrise...

Throwing shades of war before like prophecy
Nightbreed freed from the vasty deep
...Nasty reap of freaks forsaken
And when sultry Dusk disrobes they'll learn
She is not a natural blonde
For the lower She goes the darker it grows
An Eve that blows on Her knees for Satan

Fellated Satan
Screams congeal in clotted pearl
As He unfurls from aching hibernation

Stormbringer drums thunder to full Dis orchestra
As lightning streaks with fire
Black clouds that shroud the Earth
Whose cold breasts have held us in scar pillories
But now the Sun is loathe to come
The crescent moon is freed...

Elated Satan
The scimitar slash to the undergash
Of a Heaven too slight for penetration

We strike as wolves from the thickening fog
To exalt our throne above the stars of God

Lowly holy goats bare the brunt
Of rabid dogmas on a stellar bearhunt
Bastioned in citadels and monastic cells
That smell of blessed cunt
Like a convent where crosses rust
From thirty dirty habits of shaved nun
There where deeper needs are begged of lust
And cess and less impress enough

Obtaining the word of Our Guardian, Anger
And Death's tunnel vision
Bad things in collision
The locking of eyes and jagged antler

Unpicking the seams of fate sewn over dreams
Feasting from throats of celestial thieves

And God knows we seek victory
Now that we are unleashed
To drive nails home of blind faith through those
Who drove us from error to error below
Refugees clung to a crown furred in flies
Tarred with red honey, the plaster
Of many a spire that aspired to rise
Seeking Messiahs that by us soon die...

In the start like a cast
In morality plays
Our hearts wore a mask
Of dead rooks in the rain
The World was our cloister
No prayer, bent in shame
Our once lucent plumage
Stung with horn withered grey...
And way...

As Aeons slew so we grew to myth
Revenge accrued to a monolith
Bursting through from our roofed abyss
Like an aether-greased fist
Now vulvite gates are so sorely missed
Our horror pours through the orifice
Where once the spheres and archangels kissed
Phallejulah!

Fellated Satan
His coming assails
The Night In Gales
That bewail turned tides
That engulf their nation

Fuck off

Now divinity is a worm-ridden mouth
In a darkened high house
Overrun by disease
So let the truth be wrung
From vein and sanctum undone
That the Banished Ones intent
On reinstatement have won

We breathe by virtue of their rot
Now our souls exult above the stars of God.

11. TORTURED SOUL ASYLUM

"O sweet Midian
I burn for thee at heart
Don't despair me
Come bear me on wings of graveyardrock leather
To where pleasure rings deep secrets in spurts after dark"

Under full moons waxing lyrically
Death's poetry floods the soul
Like the freezing seed of a demon freed
To curse the stars with vertigo
And in their dance, in trance I've prised wide
Slick rifts twixt obsidian thights
Hymeneal gates to darker sides
A glimpse of plinths where Midian lies

Midian...

Haunted by this portent
This obsession in my mind
With a city sunk below
Tall cedar groves and graves sublime
Sporting their importance
Marble wings spread to the skies
A vale of dreams that it would seem
The daylights race to leave behind

These visions struck like a furious fuck
Nailing wet lips to cold cemetery walls
Flashes of lust to dust
Splashed across my psychic pall
As hybrid lovers reached their cusp
With final thrusts I saw it all

Forbidden Midian
A long-fabled Judecca
A sanctuary for sin...
To rival Heaven
Free for Eden's tragic wreck
Small mercies in vistas of dolmen and vault
Gaunt, haunched edifices
Midst lightfingered mists
From whence more awful shadows
Drew back rusted bolts
And dared a treshold
The searing Sun had knelt to kiss

Shades of dusk, cruelty and myth
The Tribes of Christ will not forgive
And shall not suffer their kind to live

For I, mesmerised, started not from tombs
Or their waltz so sibilant
Through the gathering gloom
But from flumes of the moon in bloom
Baring each a face effaced
And raped in the womb

In hidden Midian
A Vatican lying in state
For the sanctity of sin...
To rival Heaven
Above Eden's birth defects
Though the only Angels that arose
Were those who fell to most requests
Small mercies in vistas where dolmen and vault
Caught twisted whispers where fisted sisters
Haunched, flaunted orifice
Midst lighter-fingered mists
Whilst I watched without revolt
Carnalities few beasts permit

Between the dog and wolf
Bared fangs met in intercourse
A nightly rite of teeth and cunt
For those below who rose to hunt

Sore sights that preyed on Me for days
And in laudanum's haze
I painted them all...

The slew of sith and kin
I drew in blood, my veins in thrall
To Deathugees at peache within
(An underworld free of Mortal rule)

Grotesques and wolves in women's skin
The raven-winged and missing limbed
Suicides and split-thighed Seraphim

And marble stairs
Stargrazers dare
Ascend like prayer
(As smoke or ghost or lithe nightmare)

Under fullmoons waxing lyrically
Death's poetry floods the soul
Like the reeking weed of a demon freed
To curse the stars with vertigo
And in their dance, in trance I prise wide
Slick rifts twixt obsidian thights
Hymeneal gates to other sides
A labyrinth wherein Midian hides

Midian...

I know I've seen
Through the blackbacked mirrors in sanity
Lucent prides amassed in last retreat
Prurient souls but no more freaks
Than those leashing dreams at harm's length from Me
And just like grim ascension prophecies
My revenge, carved deep, will be
A grisly plot that reads
Like My filthy white ward spattered with their screams
When My Deviliveres come from fog for Me...

Exhuming the moon
Through the bars in My room
The sooner the bitter pills swallowed are through...
But no Genotypes, Aphrodites
Daemonarchetypes
No Cenobites rise to claim Me for you

No! No! No!
No! No! No!
Don't leave here in this storm-weathered cell
No! No! No!
With prophets and losses
And dead men from crosses
My fate is a preview of derelict Hell.

Supreme Vampiric Evil.

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