1. |
The Ghost Kings
04:16
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The Ghst Kings
The ghost kings are marching; the midnight knows their tread,
From the distant, stealthy planets of the dim, unstable dead;
There are whisperings on the night-winds and the shuddering stars have fled.
A ghostly trumpet echoes from a barren mountain head;
Through the fen the wandering witch-lights gleam like phantom arrows sped;
There is silence in the valleys and the moon is rising red.
The ghost kings are marching down the ages’ dusty maze;
The unseen feet are tramping through the moonlight’s pallid haze,
Down the hollow clanging stairways of a million yesterdays.
The ghost kings are marching, where the vague moon-vapor creeps,
While the night-wind to their coming, like a thund’rous herald sweeps;
They are clad in ancient grandeur, but the world, unheeding sleeps.
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2. |
Always Comes Evening
04:10
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Always Comes Evening
Riding down the road at evening with the stars or steed and shoon
I have heard an old man singing underneath a copper moon;
"God, who gemmed with topaz twilights, opal portals of the day,
"On "our amaranthine mountains, why make human souls of clay?
"For I rode the moon-mare's horses in the glory of my youth,
"Wrestled with the hills at sunset— till I met brass-tinctured Truth.
"Till I saw the temples topple, till I saw the idols reel,
"Till my brain had turned to iron, and my heart had turned to steel.
"Satan, Satan, brother Satan, fill my soul with frozen fire;
"Feed with hearts of rose-white women ashes of my dead desire.
"For my road runs out in thistles and my dreams have turned to dust.
"And my pinions fade and falter to the raven wings of rust.
"Truth has smitten me with arrows and her hand is in my hair—
"Youth, she hides in yonder mountains — go and see her, if you dare!
"Work your magic, brother Satan, fill my brain with fiery spells.
"Satan, Satan, brother Satan, have known your fiercest Hells."
Riding down the road at evening when the wind was on the sea,
I have heard an old man singing, and he sang most drearily
Strange to hear, when dark lakes shimmer to the wailing of the loon,
Amethystine Homer singing under evening's copper moon.
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3. |
Desolation [Album Edit]
03:27
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Desolation
The Black Door gapes and the Black Wall rises;
Twilight gasps in the grip of Night.
Paper and dust are the gems man prizes—
Torches toss in my waning sight.
Drums of glory are lost in the ages,
Bare feet fail on a broken trail—
Let my name fade from the printed pages;
Dreams and visions are growing pale.
Twilight gathers and none can save me.
Well and well, for I would not stay:
Let me speak through the stone you gave me:
He never could say what he wished to say.
Why should I shrink from the sign of leaving?
My brain is wrapped in a darkened cloud;
Towers shake and the stars reel under,
Skulls are heaped in the Devil's fain;
My feet are wrapped in a rolling thunder,
Jets of agony lance my brain.
What of the world that I leave forever?
Phantom forms in a fading sight—
Carry me out on the ebon river
Into the Night.
(R.E. Howard Lines written in the realization that I must die, 1938)
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4. |
The Borderland
04:28
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The Borderland
The blind black shadows reach inhuman arms
To draw me into darkness once again;
The brooding night wind hints of nameless harms,
And down the shadowed hill a vague refrain
Bears half-remembered ghosts to haunt my soul,
Like far-off neighing of the nightmare's foal.
But let me fix my phantom-shadowed eyes
Hard on the stars — pale points of silver light—
Here is the borderlad — here reason lies—
There, vision, gryphons, Nothing, and the Night.
Down, down, red spectres, down, and rack me not!
Out, wolves of Hell! Oh God, my pulses thrum;
The night grows fierce and blind and red and hot,
And nearer still a frim insistent drum.
I will not look into the shadows — No!
The star shall grip and hold my frantic gaze—
But even in the stars black visions grow,
And dragons writhe with iron eyes ablaze.
Oh Gods that raised my blindness with your curse,
And let me see the horrid shapes behind
All outward veils that cloak the universe,
The loathsome demon-spells that bind and blind,
Since even the stars are noisome, foul and fell,
Let me glut deep with memory dreams of hell.
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5. |
The Hills of Kandahar
02:27
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The Hills of Kandahar
The night primeval breaks in scarlet mist;
The shadows gray, and pales each silent star,
The eastern sky that rose-lipped dawn has kissed
Glows crimson o'er the hills of Kandahar.
A trumpet song re-echoes from afar;
Across the crags the golden glory grows
To drive the shades, renewing ancient war;
Now bursts full bloom the gorgeous morning rose.
These are the hills that many a sultan trod;
Their rocks have known full many a victor's stride;
These peaks could tell their tale of human pride―
See where they rear, each like a somber god.
Aye, they have gazed since first the primal dawn
Fired with a wild, vague flame a bestial soul
Who rose and stood and saw his fallen spawn
With him, somehow, part of Creation's whole,
And made himself immortal with a goal
To be attained―this untaught simian faun.
Aye, but these peaks have known the human tread:
The ebb and flow of dim humanity,
The restless, surging, never-easing tide.
The swarming tribes that came unceasingly;
The lust of kings, the bloody war-dawn's red,
The races that arose and ruled―and died.
They will be brooding when mankind is gone;
The teeming tribes that scaled their barricades―
Dim hordes that waxed at dusk and waned at dawn―
Are but as snow that on their shoulders fades.
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6. |
Black Chant Imperial
03:29
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Black Chant Imperial
Trumpets triumph in red disaster,
White skulls litter the broken sod,
And we who rode for the one Black Master
Howl at the iron gates of God,
Temples rock and singers falter,
Lights go out in the rushing gloom―
Slay the priest on this blackened altar,
Rip the babe from the women's womb!
Black be the night that locks around them,
They who chant of the God and Light,
Black be the pinions that shall confound them,
Breaking their brains with a deadly fright.
Praised be the Prince that rules forever
Throned in the shadows stark and grim,
Where cypress moans by the midnight river―
Lift your goblets and drink to him!
Virgins wail and a babe is whining
Nailed like a flag on a gory lance;
White on the skulls the stars are shining,
Over them sweeps our demon's dance.
Trumpets bray and stars are riven!
Shatter the altar, blot the light!
From the bursting hells to the fallen heaven
We are kings of the world tonight!
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7. |
The Abyss
03:26
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The Abyss
Ten million years beyond the sweep of Time,
Ten million leagues from bound and measured Place
I hear vast monsters in the cosmic slime
That mock the pallid glow of my dim face.
Here scum is quick and crawling filth alive
And nameless, shapeless horrors breed and crawl,
And serpent-things horrific writhe and thrive
But through the nauseous muck I hear the Call
There still are deeper Hells of Time to plumb,
Dark demon shapes more terrible and vast―
Unheard, unguessed, un-dreamed of, broods the drum,
That crouch along the sky-line of the Past.
Great taloned fingers grope from out the Deeps
And fearful eyes are gleaming in the gloom,
Dismembered limbs that lie in moldering heaps
Start up and strive to drag me to my doom
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8. |
Alpha and Omega
04:08
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Alpha and Omega
Something tapped me on the shoulder
Something whispered, "Come with me,"
"Leave the world of men behind you,
"Come where care may never find you
"Come and follow, let me bind you
"Where, in that dark, silent sea,
"Tempest of the world n'er rages;
"There to dream away the ages,
"Heedless of Time's turning pages,
"Only, come with me."
"Who are you?" I asked the phantom,
"I am rest from Hate and Pride.
"I am friend to king and beggar.
"I am Alpha and Omega,
"I was councilor to Hagar
"But men call me suicide.
"I was weary of tide breasting,
Weary of the world's behesting,
And I lusted for the resting
As a lover for his bride.
And my soul tugged at its moorings
And it whispered, "Set me free.
"I am weary of this battle,
"Of this world of human cattle,
"All this dreary noise and prattle.
"This you owe to me."
Long I sat and long I pondered,
On the life that I had squandered,
O'er the paths that I had wandered
Never Free.
In the shadow panorama
Passed life's struggles and its fray.
And my soul tugged with new vigor,
Huger grew the phantom's figure,
As I slowly tugged the trigger,
Saw the world fade swift away.
Through the fogs old Time came striding,
Radiant clouds were 'bout me riding,
As my soul when gliding, gliding,
From the shadow into day.
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9. |
The Riders of Babylon
05:12
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The Riders of Babylon
The riders of Babylon clatter forth
Like the hawk-winged scourgers of Azrael
To the meadow-lands of the South and North
And the strong-walled cities of Israel.
They harry the men of the caravans,
They bring rare plunder across the sands
To deck the throne of the great god Baal.
But Babylon's king is a broken shell
And Babylon's queen is a sprite from Hell;
And men shall say, "Here Babylon fell,"
Ere Time has forgot the tale.
The riders of Babylon come and go
From Gaza's halls to the shores of Tyre;
They shake the world from the lands of snow
To the deserts, red in the sunset's fire;
Their horses swim in a sea of gore
And the tribes of the earth bow down before;
They have chained the seas where the Cretans sail.
But Babylon's sun shall set in blood;
Her towers shall sink in a crimson flood;
And men shall say, "Here Babylon stood,"
Ere Time forgot the tale.
(R.E. Howard The Riders of Babylon, 1938)
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10. |
Babel
07:32
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Babel
Now in the gloom the pulsing drums repeat,
And all the night is filled with evil sound;
I hear the throbbing on inhuman feet
On marble stairs that silence locks around.
I see black temples loom against the night,
With tentacles like serpents writhed afar,
And waving in a dusky dragon light
Great moths whose wings unholy tapers char.
Red memory on memory, tier on tier,
Builds up a tower, time and space to span;
Through world on world I rise, and sphere on sphere,
To star-shot gulfs of lunacy and fear—
Black screaming ages never dreamed by man.
Was this your plan, foul spawn of cosmic mire,
To freeze my soul to stone and icy fire,
To carve me in the moon that all mankind
May know its race is futile, weak and blind—
A horror-blasted statue in the sky,
That does not live and nevermore can die?
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SECTEUR 33 France
Coming from the north of France, Secteur 33 brings you darkness and coldness from the 80's. Built up around a bass/guitar duo, Secteur 33 finds inspiration in 80's new wave/cold wave (Joy Division, Fields of the Nephilim, the Smiths...), indus (Ministry, Front 242...), horror, fantasy and sci-fi movies and litterature. Come with us in a journey through time and despair. ... more
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