AT THE GATES LYRICS

1. El Altar Del Dios Desconocido

Al llegar a la época de la banda de asaltantes había elaborado ya las siguientes posibilidades:
1.- Dios no existe.
2.- Dios existe y es un canalla.
3.- Dios existe pero a veces duerme, sus pesadillas son nuestra existencia.
4.- Dios existe pero tiene acceso de locura, esos accesos son nuestra existencia.
5.- Dios no es omnipresente, no puede estar en todas partes. A veces está ausente, en otros mundos, en otras cosas.
6.- Dios es un pobre diablo con problemas demasiado complicado para sus fuerzas. Lucha con la materia como un artista con su obra. Algunas veces, en algún momento llega a ser Goya, pero generalmente es un desastre.
7.- Dios fue derrotado antes de la historia por el príncipe de las tinieblas, y derrotado, cometido como presunto diablo es doblemente desprestigiado puesto que se le atribuye este universo calamitoso.

2. Death And The Labyrinth

Behind the curtain
Laid to ruins
Words that drift
Into oblivion

With every dawn
The world deforms
And as we fade
Our truth it dies

Our poetry of broken dreams
An abattoir of time

Deep in the hive of the serpent
We shed the disguises we have worn
A curtain of madmen
We are the illusions we have torn

Death and the labyrinth
Swallowed by earth itself

With every dawn
Of hunger and thirst
The world deforms
To a pale uncertain ash

Words without sound
Fade away - as they are swallowed
Swallowed by barriers and walls
Like a swarm

Deep in the hive of the serpent
We shed the disguises we have worn
A curtain of madmen
We are the illusions we have torn

Our poetry of broken dreams
An abattoir of time

Death and the labyrinth
Swallowed by earth itself

3. At War With Reality

A howling wind of nightmares
Howling through barren streets
Frozen in time
The city woke up - paralyzed

Where is the splendor?
All our ambitions decay
Among the ruins
Covered forever in dust

War

The sound of beating winds
Chaotic dreams asleep
As phantoms we answer
At war with reality

Where is the hunger?
With eyes of sadness it stares
The air it hangs dying
Dressed in the nightmares of old

Abandoned in panic - fortifications decayed
From our own indulgence - the golden age dead

War

The sound of beating winds
Chaotic dreams asleep
As phantoms we answer
At war with reality

As phantoms we answer
At war with reality

4. The Circular Ruins

The halls of the grotesque
Reverberate our final doom
Oh, the ravenous indulgence
The rite of passage eternal

A black lung full of ash
A parasitic void
Oh, the tenebrous upheaval
Our defeat triumphant

Into this parasitic void
The emperor's crypt
The rite of passage eternal
For this Adam of dust

Statues crumble - flags are torn
As a crawling chaos - we ascend

A black lung full of ash
A parasitic void
Oh, the tenebrous upheaval
Our defeat triumphant

Into this parasitic void
The emperor's crypt
The rite of passage eternal
For this Adam of dust

At the gates of the void
Dark spirits rising
An ominous sun
Piercing the circular ruins

5. Heroes And Tombs

We are a burning darkness
Swamped by a thousand seas
Mute from fear, hollow and eternal
We sleep forever
The end goes on

Bodies like pillars of dust – disappear once again in the wind
During the night, we move in circles, in unbroken structures

Our beams they sweep across a ravaged earth
As a rhythmic pulse of death – we shudder through the ground

We are a burning darkness
Swamped by a thousand seas
Mute from fear, hollow and eternal

Of heroes and tombs – we sleep forever
Of heroes and tombs – the end goes on

Hollow and eternal
We sleep forever
The end goes on

Of heroes and tombs – we sleep forever
Of heroes and tombs – the end goes on

"I realized that searching was my symbol, the emblem of those who go out at night with nothing in mind, the motives of a destroyer of compasses."
[Julio Cortázar]

6. The Conspiracy Of The Blind

Let the language be the blade
Dead it stares into our empty lives

Created needs - as tumors they grow
The swarming worms of a thousand lies

The conspiracy of the blind - staring dead into our lives of decay

Hermetic halls - echo silent now
Flood the landscape of our minds

The conspiracy of the blind - staring dead into our lives of decay

From the lips of the blind man
A kiss of decay
The dawn of the iconoclast
A sharpened blade

The conspiracy of the blind - staring dead into our lives of decay

7. Order From Chaos

As parasites we grovel - through the dust
A temple devoured - by the ancient fires
Autumn falls hard on restless flesh
Persistence buried in the sands of time

The grey man kissed the mud
Circular the ruins - in a dawn without birds
Crowned by the deities of death

Streets as cracks in the skin
To drink from the night itself
Webs of perdition - crush the rushing earth
The aching void lures - promising rebirth

Order from chaos - every thought a tool
Order from chaos - profaned by the burned and the dead

8. The Book Of Sand (The Abomination)

The despair eternal, deafening
Watch it burn

We run like rats - along the walls
Rising higher - around solitary lives

Deep in your dreams - the dead they sing
Our name spells C.U.R.S.E.

We run like rats - along the walls
Rising higher - around solitary lives

Infected forever - we hide inside the hive
Grey and faded - hibernated lives
A moment without presence - as we fall in line
Lost in the maze - of iron must be the night

Of iron must be the night

The golden age - an inner wasteland
The abomination - the book of sand

We run like rats - along the walls
Rising higher - around solitary lives

Infected forever - we hide inside the hive
Grey and faded - hibernated lives
A moment without presence - as we fall in line
Lost in the maze - of iron must be the night

Of iron must be the night

9. The Head Of The Hydra

Language - self-destruction
Against the iron air
In broken, non-verbal strains
An all-devouring sand

The phantasm
We invoke
A monument
A final stand

We disappear
The words from our bodies torn
Irresistible
In all its bewildering forms

Deceptive - the images burn
Fragments of silent lives
Hunger of the dreaming dead
Imagination - the death of man

The phantasm
We invoke
A monument
A final stand

In blasphemy
The words from our bodies torn
Temptation
Death in all its bewildering forms

The tomb is the passage
As the light flickers before me
The head of the hydra
The charlatan denounced

We disappear
The words from our bodies torn
Irresistible
In all its bewildering forms

10. City Of Mirrors

[Instrumental]

11. Eater Of Gods

Hunger - and the world is reduced
Reduced to the surface of her skin
Like a spray of broken glass
His bones began to fill with words

Like a monolith once lost
As our ash crown the barren mountains

As if mercy were a skin of water
We fall into a prior dream
The number of the grains of sand
Exiled from the memory of men

The strategies of war - through a universe of grief
Ad the city of mirrors - wiped out by the wind

Through the impenetrable haze
Through shapeless fog
Scattered through these desolate plains
White shine the bones: Eater of gods

As if mercy were a skin of water
We fall into a prior dream
The number of the grains of sand
Exiled from the memory of men

And as the smoke shifts in black
Only ashes remain
And as the smoke shifts in black
Eater of gods
Eater of gods

12. Upon Pillars Of Dust

[Verse]
Fragile, quiet and distant as flesh against another
Heroism suppressed, leavin' hunger in its wake
Tired even of sleep
A fragment of life, no more pain!

[Pre-Chorus]
The nights they will drag on
These hands will not abide
A nightmare beckons leavin' death in its wake

[Chorus]
The sickness is a dream
Imprisoned in the deep of the stone
Reality restin' upon pillars of dust
The infinite voracious arms of myth

[Bridge]
Trying to even out sleep
With death in our way

[Chorus]
The sickness is a dream
Imprisoned in the deep of the stone
Reality restin' upon pillars of dust
The infinite voracious arms of myth

13. The Night Eternal

The walls of a poem like the foldin' of wings!
They burn through the base of the skull!

Under the eyelids the night eternal!
Down fell the city of words

The blackness throbbin'
Foul & unrestrained
Under the seafloor!
Against the white sand

Where the land has been drinkin'
All our blood & regret
Our words are like quicksand!
Against the endless sky

The poisonous darkness!
In solid silence
Like rivers of ice!
We burn like blindin' fires

In the void of my spirit!
Deep in the lungs of Hell to sink like lead!
In the void of my spirit
Deep in the lungs of hell
Trace-less through the air!

14. Language Of The Dead

[Mediabook Edition Bonus Track]

The trail of the serpent
And all our models of fear
A generation buried
Behind the ring of a city dead
Now piercing the silence
The map of our nightmare unfolds
And our black and white lives
Are suspended in dreams

Cloaked in the tongue of the dead
His voice like a scar through the dark
As weightless eyes watching
Pregnant with doom - the night
Now piercing the silence
The map of our nightmare unfolds
And our black and white lives
Are suspended in dreams

The resolution of concepts
A world without end is reborn
Remnants of life
Unbearable to itself

And the coils of the serpent
Unwind the structures of fear
Our generation hollow
Within the realms of a city dead
Language is weakness
A consequence of hindered thoughts
The reversal perpetual
The world rises out of its darkness

The resolution of concepts
A world without end is reborn
Remnants of life
Unbearable to itself

15. The Skin Of A Fire

[Mediabook Edition Bonus Track]

To dare see beyond - is to believe
There's no absolution - no penance to endure
As I choose my own dagger
To tear through - this cloak of deceit

As we crawl through our lives
As we wade through their filth
Upon the throne in chains
True humanity prevails







AT THE GATES LYRICS