cradle of filth

2. The Principle Of Evil Made Flesh

From the primeval mass
Let precious chaos vent
Sacred flesh drenched in fornication
Beloved by Set
May the winds gather her together
From the secrets of men
After thousands of years of terrifying silence
She comes again

(All Destroyer)

The abolition of the yeshua begins...

Shattered are the icons of the worthless
The Goddess scorned is a Valkyrie born
Scattered are the wings of the virulent holy
Leave their husks to be the prey of vultures and dogs

World without end
Cherish the lissome wants of pernicious evil
Dusk in her eyes
Torn bloody weeping skies
Darkness will hasten to devour
And the weak will flee or die

Sie sind es die sich
An der Liebe festhalten
Für immer betend auf knien
Vor der finsteren göttin

I slay the lamb in the fervour of thine
Abandonment unto Our Lady
With a quenchless thirst for the infinite
For Her that exists beyond all knowledge

Storming from tired centuries
Under the glare of a waxing death-moon
Terrible beauty of love severed
Rip the baby from the virginal womb

The blood of Jesus
Is the wine of the dead
And the drunken angels
Bleed with incest

The Liliot suckle on Her fruitful breasts
And yield the swords that sever and stain
There will be no act or passion wrought
That shall not be attributed to Her names

To the name of Baphomet...
Artemis, Bastet, Astarte

I yearn to thee who art darkness in thy rising

"Weltmacht oder Niedergang"

3. The Forest Whispers My Name

Black candles dance to an overture
But I am drawn past their flickering lure
To the breathing forest that surrounds the room
Where the vigilant trees push out of the womb

I sip the blood-red wine
My thoughts weigh heavy with the burden of time
From knowledge drunk from the fountain of life
From Chaos born out of love and the scythe
The forest beckons with her nocturnal call
To pull me close amid the baying of wolves
Where the bindings of Christ are down-trodden with scorn
In the dark, odiferous earth

We embrace like two lovers at death
A monument to the trapping of breath
As restriction is bled from the veins of my neck
To drop roses on my marbled breast
I lust for the wind and the flurry of leaves
And the perfume of flesh on the murderous breeze
To learn from the dark and the voices between

This is my will...

The forest whispers my name... again and again

When the moon is full
We shall assemble to adore
The potent spirit of your Queen,
My mother great Diana.
She who fain would learn all sorcery
Yet has not won its deepest secrets,
Then my mother will
Teach her, in truth
All things as yet unknown

I walk the path
To the land of the Dark Immortals
Where the hungry ones will carry my soul
As the wild hunt careers through the boughs

Come to me, my Pale Enchantress
In the moon of the woods we kiss

Artemis be near me
In the arms of the ancient oak
Where daylight hangs by a lunar noose
And the horned, hidden one is re-invoked

The principle of Evil
Evolution has been recalled
Beneath the spread of a Magickal Aeon
I stand enthralled
...In the whispering forest

"Pale, beyond porch and portal,
Crowned with leaves, she stands,
Who gathers all things mortal,
With cold immortal hands,
Her languid lips are sweeter,
Than love's who fears to greet her,
To men that mix and meet her,
From many times and lands."

[A.C. Swinburne]

4. Iscariot

5. The Black Goddess Rises

Thee I invoke, bornless one
All woman, pure predator
Wherein conspiracy and impulse dwell
Like a seething fall from grace

Thee I worship...

Thou art darkest Gabrielle
Lilith who rode the steed
Thou art pale Hecate
Rising from Thessaly

Crush their unworthy idols
No church shall bar our path
Seductive Evil, drink your fill
Of the bleeding Christ in your arms

You are in my dreams
The darkness in my eyes
The rapture in my screams
Black Goddess arise

Nothing will keep us apart
We could kill them all
If our desire tore free
Our union is one, sweet, sinful Eve

And the night draws in beside her
As we embrace the dark side by side
I pour my soul to those eyes full of fire
To harvest the seed ploughed inside her

Archangel, snare the flesh
Suck dry the ebbing wound
Leave them lifeless and broken
My beloved...

Oh, how I have craved for you
You so pure and other-worldly with your scent of Winter
Am I to bleed myself dry just to see your delight?

And the fear retreats forever
(Come to me... Black Goddess arise)
When my secrets are buried in thine
(Come to me... Black Goddess arise)
Under seven stars we came together
(Come to me... Black Goddess arise)
To plot the new age's decline
(Come to me... ARISE!)

Ishtar my Queen
Come forth to me
And help me seize
My future from the House of Death

That in the release of immortality
I should slay their fucking Nazarene
Ah... the lies... the jew... I kill for you

Hidden lusts will break the gates and swarm
As love secretes the thrill for war
The virgin raped shall seek to whore
She-wolf bare your snarling jaw

"Caught in thy net of shadows,
What dreams hast thou to show?
Who treads the silent meadows,
To worship thee below?"

[Traditional]

6. One Final Graven Kiss

7. A Crescendo Of Passion Bleeding

Spells lay daggers before me
Passion speaks in grue vehement stabs
Trance my eyes, fix my focus to pain
The tumour grows until the enemy is slain

(Gut The Church)

Slightless storm
Knee-deep in hate I seeth
My purpose here has woken to breath
Total war on the brethren of Men
Millions regardless
Dying by my hand

A Black Age Of Fire
Brief in its vicious eloquence
Removing the dross
Love will arise from the ashes of your loss

Then and only then
Will the pleasure of Eden be mine
And the sinews of life itself will be tied
In the very veins of my bloodline

And their tears taste like wine...

I will rule as a king
And the Goddess will sit as my guiding Queen
In the glory of the earth our crowns are studded
With the jewels of blasphemy

The blood is the life!

I seek to evoke a new order in Man
A flood of compulsion to resurrect Khem
The lion is vexed to uproot and descend
Chaos my steed in the thick, clinging dust
Tempering weapons of criminal lust
I hold sway from the East to fulfill prophecies
Thinning the cause as fresh cells to disease

The blood is the life!

Even the moon will not lend thee her light
The darkness serves will to snuff out human life
That I might reclaim the world as my right

I kill without scruple or silent regret
In haunts of the sinister lunar aspect
For I am the pleasure that comes from your pain
Tiny red miracles falling like... rain

The incessant pall of death surrounds me
But this is not the part of me that wishes to breed
There will be no dread thereafter
The mysteries I reveal unto thee

I stir the hearts of the wisest
By the fools I will always be feared
My Kingdom feeds off their slaughter...

A crescendo of passion bleeding...
On the pale reflection of dawn

Devour The Sun

"The Great Man of his time
Is He who expresses
The Will of his time;
Who tells his time what it wills;
And who carries it out"

[Hegel]

8. To Eve The Art Of Witchcraft

Crawl in awful stealth to me
Forever a voyeur I've been
Nocturnal Goddess of the Moon
So she comes, unseen

Thus (Uzza and Azel) speak

The burning seed, is thrust in Eve
And yearning keeps me, captive of desire

Make me as a flower that grows
Forever in your throne
That I might pollinate the world
With darkness as your own
Embrace me in spellbinding eyes
The fire of life that never dies
Tear deeper through my paper wounds
And never leave inside

Love shall consume and bathe the Lady
Whom I worship and ride thereon
She will greet me as a serpent
In her dark, secret Eden
And I will always want
For her witchcraft is
Desire... (Desire...)
My soul is poisoned from within...

I crawl with languid guilt to thee
Forever flushed in sin
Lamia, latria I give
My soul is poisoned from within

Wisdom breeds, fecundity
And her cunt she feeds, to fulfill her desire

To Eve I cum...

Sevenfold my passion wrought
To ransack Eden, and to taste the whore
I cling beyond her sabled court
She is a gateway, to that darkness lost

(Now dream...)

I am the gentle stream
That trickles through the summer glades
Of ever green peace
Therefore we will drink my sleep and dream
I am the bleeding sky,
The snatching wind of war
Blowing through the savage garden
My crown is fire, the erotic sinews of lust
Like strings to be pulled, and cut
I will make my puppets dance
The men will bow down before me
To take my flesh as lucid thoughts
Of dark, unbridled lust
I am all these things and more
Thus I await you, nemesis of restraint
The code of life, and the bride of evil itself

Oh, the fevered need for Her
When greed and lust are sharpened in that one desire
The all-consuming fire
Reveal to me your mysteries, Witch
The tree is plundered but I have the seed
To be sown in thee

"Mon sortilege a ete le pouvoir qui diovent
Avoir les ames fortes sur les espirits faibles"

[Leonora Galigai]

9. Of Mist And Midnight Skies

We, the nocturnal few
Bound by other laws
To the service of the enemies of god
Are silent and hidden
Yet our exquisite fire burns on
Poised to engulf...

Tie a man to his god
He may not walk for fear
Of falling foul to temptation
Where once faith stood her ground

Renounce the guilt, ignite the flame
Cast the fetid virgin back from where she came
Drink deep of the promise in my eyes...
Of mist and midnight skies

I drown in fathomless dreams
And in the reeking mire of virtue scream
I yearn to sell my very soul
(And you shall
For none so dark & sinister
Will arise to embrace the Arts)
Do What Thou Wilt
Until the stones in my heart stand still
Regardless of the cost to your repugnant god

The last May frost may blight the crops
And will never be ascribed to be heavenly dog
Or nature, but infernal tasks...
"By your cursings and imprecations
You wrong both Man & beast
By whatever whim you serve
Of the Devil your leige"

Tie belief to the trinity, and seven ways
Will be wrought to condemn thee
Conspiring to cull the pagan ways

Twist back their lies, personify their needs
The war begins by Satanic decree
If Evil we be, we will our lives...
To mist and midnight skies

(I will avenge the deaths of a thousand burning children)

Be bound to a covenant with us in our hellish league
And bring the host of the Nazarene to their knees
Breath the life of an entity never-born
Darkness now descend in raven form
The words, the burning rasp, vibrate the cosmic thread
Arcturus is risen Queen, hold forth the severed head to me

I pour my lovelorn kisses at your feet
Raper of all my worldly enemies

Lycanthropy, please poison me
Send acausal instincts crawling my brain
Take me, Mistress, until perversion is fed
Dark Magick pleasures weaved under the jewelled moon-head
The cross-stick will fade when the usurper hangs
For now we congregate where once my angel sang

That night they came and took her away from me
I lost the woman I loved and I learned how to curse
And to spit in the face of their... "god"

We will ride again
In the midnight skies

10. In Secret Love We Drown

11. A Dream Of Wolves In The Snow

"Oh, listen to them
The children of the night
What sweet music they make"
[From Bram Stoker's "Dracula" (1897)]

May dreams be brought that I might reach...
The gentle strains of midnight speech
And frozen stars that gild the forest floor

Through the swirling snow
Volkh's children come
To run with me, to hunt as one
To snatch the lambs of Christ
From where they fall...

12. Summer Dying Fast

Through acrid clouds of summer flies
The garden swells with a thousand more wise
Forever flung to celestial dreams
Clawing at the grave of the dead Nazarene

I watch the storm approaching
The darkness calls my name
The trees are growing restless
They feel the season change
Their fruit has putrified
Forbidden once and bound to die
The thread of life lies severed
On the brink of paradise

Grinning winds of hate unfurled
Dash towers tall that grip the sun
Talons stretch her veil
Reclamation, our time has come...

Autumn spreads its golden wings
And lays the path for those unseen
A tangled web of evil spun at last...
Winter spawn from barren thighs
To readdress, to slay the blind
And throw the reins untethered to the skies

They pray to the full moon rising
Diana moving with such infinite grace
Wrapped alone in a blanket of nightfall
How many secrets can they read by your face?

Will they know of majesty
Of beauty held in dream-dead sleep
And scarlet seas that bleed the frozen shores?
Will their "god" of bridled love
Assuage our rule from planes above
Or shrink in fear from Chaos roused for war?

WAR!

Wrest askew the nails
That have held you, lurking deep
September prayers are waning
Burn the shrines of fettered sheep
Spearhead the insurrection
Of a world that seeks no end
"We are what we are, what we shall be, again..."

Appear; draped in terror
To the comfort of your kin
Stain the milky sunset red
And let the others in...

Summer's dying...

13. Imperium Tenebrarum

Swords in hand at the bloody fields of history
We rend our blades through dogma and humility
Carve the future according to our will
Set worlds ablaze with our seething fire
Let you all acknowledge that we are here
As masters to rule this failing humanity
Our beings formed in rage and defiance
With strength to trample the weak and the foolish
And so we march with burning brands
Temples of flame on our path to glory

Dani Filth - Dark Immortal Screams
Paul Allender - Desponent Night Chords
Ben Ryan - Gothic Vampyric Overtures
Rob Graves - Nocturnal Pulse
Paul Ryan - Satanic War Noise
Nic Barker - Winter Evening Sto

Vocals on "A Dream Of Wolves In The Snow" by Darren (Anathema).
All female vocals arranged and performed by Andrea Meyer.
Cello accompaniment by Soror Proselemos.
"Imperium Tenebrarum" written and invoked by Frater Nihil.

All music by Cradle Of Filth.
All lyrics by Dani.

Thanks to evil-i, lian.bathory for correcting these lyrics.
Thanks to ae0ae for sending track #13 lyrics.
Thanks to yami_no_okami1 for correcting track #1 lyrics.
Thanks to lord_chrom for correcting track #2 lyrics.
Thanks to Zach the Ripper for correcting track #3 lyrics.
Thanks to filth7986, handle_nazzi, jjpuszczyk for correcting track #5 lyrics.
Thanks to Tiago Cattani for correcting tracks #8, #11, #13 lyrics.
Thanks to d_samantha78 for correcting track #12 lyrics.
Thanks to neutron1871 for correcting track #13 lyrics.

Submits, comments, corrections are welcomed at webmaster@darklyrics.com

CRADLE OF FILTH LYRICS