CRADLE OF FILTH LYRICS

1. Under Pregnant Skies She Comes Alive Like Miss Leviathan

[Instrumental]

2. Dirge Inferno

"Carrion my name
For those who choose to mouth the curse
A tragic serenade
With Judas in my stride
The Gothic halls of shame
Where statues coldly hold no worse
Than the murders I reclaim
From a dark, forsaken time"

Kissing heaven, spent
He wipes lips free of his hectic discharge
Wishing to repent
For the brute that ravaged free
In slight hands beauty weeps
Conquest's deep methodical screwing
Hurt repeatedly
Like the world wound at his feet

Dirge Inferno

As it is written, damn it
So let it be wrung
From throats of those in overthrow
The past at last has come

A savage bit without respite
Pervades the freezing air
This winter chill, grist for his mill
If tears of joy will blear elsewhere
And church bells drown in the cracks of doom
The storms above us hew
As lightning runs like bifurcate tongues
Deflowering two by two

Hissing, malcontent
He storms the skies on electric discharge
Pissing in contempt
On the effigies of the weak
Killing all resolve
The great beast simmers, his scarlet women
Spit their vitriol
On the terrified face of peace

Dirge Inferno

As it is written, damn it
So let it be wrung
From throats of those in overthrow
Our past at last has come

A hellbound heart, the rose and thorn
Have locked to hasten blood
The moon disrobes, to harden droves
Of legions pouring
These rivers press, his breath adorns
Senates and enemy seats
Whilst his power takes as ingratitude
The writhing of the weak

"Wormwood my name
The poisoned star that fell to earth
And blistered free of shame
In the pits of self-rebirth
Now those caves become a Garret
Overseeing endless barracks
As the waters turn to claret
And the Vatican satins burn"

3. Tonight In Flames

"I will give to drink without cost,
From the spring of the water of life.
He who overcomes will inherit all this...
And I will be his God... and he will be my son."

When contrary winds blow across the sands
Their murmurs can be easily swayed
But when storms quicken one cannot placate
The howling of their murderous rages

Winged seraphim hold love's trembling hand
Beside our waiting graves
As war roars about out precious land
Seeking cause to subjugate

Tonight in flames
Tonight the world will fear our names
Tonight in flames
Stay my feeble heart
Our deaths will be the start
Of something glorious and vain
Tonight in flames

There is no fanaticism as virile as faith
To the blind his words are clear
"Suffer not the infidel! Suffer not the infidel!
Assure your place in paradise here"

Winged seraphim hold love's trembling hand
Beside her tiny grave
I will avenge her, do or damned
Her sacred mother did the same

I went to see her dance one day
In a play by a wailing wall
Now she is gone
But the song lives on
Zealous and maniacal

[spoken:]
(But) the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, (the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts,) the idolaters and all liars--their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. (This is the second death.)"

The Eastern sword must fall

Tonight in flames
Tonight the world will fear our names
Tonight in flames
Stay my feeble heart
Our deaths will be the start
Of something glorious and vain
Tonight in flames

4. Libertina Grimm

Howitzer glare and spitfire blade
Wooed by Dresden serenades
Her soundtrack now a bombing raid
Bored of vaudeville

God was six days sober
On the night that she was born
To the glistening star of a bible class
An icon now in religious porn
She was Alice through the glory hole
An ejaculate misconception
Disney-esque, the high priestess
Of greed and deepest dark deception

All best to bury whims
For Miss Libertina Grimm

She, that little red riding crop
Brer Werewold at her stocking tops
Beneath the tightened leather strop
Of the basque of the houndervilles

At the stroke of midnight come
She polished verse and hearses
In a poisonous pen dipped in omen
To her surgeon full of general curses
In the hand of morgue redeemers
Though the dead always pleased her more
Squatting in their coffins
Flirting curtsies to the thirteenth floor

Tip your hats
For sweet Libertina Grimm

Fantasy and candy stores
Snow white and the seven straws
Smoke and mirrors on all fours...
Libertina Grimm

Her brothers grim, her sisters through
The final dance will be the cue
She amputates to fit the shoe
Libertina Grimm

Libertina Grimm

Mystery kindled in a blackened room
Nine candles lit to improve the gloom
She sees the dark as she feels womb
Full of hidden secrets
They haunt her heart, those precious few
Those Count Lestats and Betty Blues
Those tortured souls just like me and you
Full of hidden secrets

No, don't go
Don't you leave me
So alone
Libertina
No, don't you go
Don't you leave me here
So alone
Where the dead are free to roam

5. The Byronic Man

As lonely as a poet on the wall of Jericho
Or the moon without the comfort of the stars
I am loathe to know it that a man without a soul
Is nothing but a split canopic jar

I proved it, improved it
Drove a sonnet right through it
And in this state of bliss
Evil kissed with wet lips
Pen-filled fingertips
Which drew me, for through me
Illuminati usually pissed
But with words of some hurts worth
I threw a party that extended God's list

Exciting new flames that my fame would claim for me
Reciting back the almanac of travesties

They call me bad
Mad Caliban with manner
Dangerous to know
A passing fad
Taught in all debauch
In excess and in canto

Grown wild this child
Whole harems defiled
Faustina's and Mina's
Lady Libertine and her sisters between her

What spread of lies arise when lovers die
Which circle of hell is mine when I arrive?

They call me bad
Mad Caliban with manners
Dangerous to know
A passing fad
Taught in all debauch
Crow against the virgin snow

Grown colder, my shoulder
Like a boulder beside her
And bolder, not wiser
My dark seed took up root inside he
That mouldered, where older

Beddings would hold a passionate sigh
But laudanum and soda
Lord Numb coda
Merited a forest of inherited spite

Fleeing grief for foreign maps
I still played vampire aristocrat
Unloading my gun in hot, promiscuous laps

Then shooting swans in a gondola
I tripped my foot on a fallen star
And there's nothing like a mouthful of Venetian tar
To let you know just who you fucking are

[Ville:]
The patron saint of heartache
You can't see my world is falling
The world is falling down
The patron saint of heartache
Can't see the world is falling
My world is falling down

[Dani and Ville:]
Ever after, can they hear my laughter?
The patron saint of heartache
Never craft a better bed of disaster...
The patron saint of heartache

They call me bad
Made Caliban with manners
Dangerous to know
A passing fad
Taught in all debauch
In excess and in canto

They call me bad
Mad Caliban with manners
Dangerous to know
A passing fad
Whereupon I tell them
To go fuck their mothers
As so...
On my grave

6. I Am The Thorn

The needle in the eye of the hurricane
The poison in the font
The nail in the coffin of the profane
I am the lot

Maniacal the fire
That weaves inside my should
When dripping tongues of hate, envenomed, roll
Like carpet bombs in vast bazaars
My blood runs with the beasts
Though no crescent, cross
Or wandering star
Shalt witness my defeat

Born of jackal in the Vatican
To a loathsome flock I have crept behind the drapes
And a wizard there is not
Just a white flag blackened by
Singing weapons that have led
A faith that soon dominions over
Desert kingdoms of the dead

I smell the fleur du malcontent
The hellish stench
Of Judas in the dozens

Bouquets for greed and twisted law
Handmaidens of a holy war
Bring on a thousand roses more
I am the thorn
Tangled are the thickets
That spare the virgin heart
From the waking grasp of rapists in the dark

Mountaineers that strive so far
For a Heaven grown from reach
That love herself is fabled
To be missing from their peaks
Save in one sole tower
Where the presence of a rod
Stays the sleeping beauty
From the prying fingers of the mob

I smell the fleur du malcontent
The hellish stench
Of Judas in the dozens

Bouquets for greed and twisted law
Handmaidens of a holy war
Bring on a thousand roses more
I am the thorn

I am the thorn

I am the Spear of Longinus
The sword of Damocles
Kali up in arms, a bleeding sinus
The hammer of the gods in the prophet's teeth

Saint Disgustus, President Evil
Great white hopes of a shark-eyed people
Light of the world now flicker and die

Impaled in the race, in the paling face
Where forked tongues pricked the skies
Choking on these words as I slither to their ear
A lightning strikes their blinded mains

I am not the hand of god...
I am the thorn

Territorial thieves
Ever stealing thunder for religious causes
I will bring you all down to your knees

And fuck you over

7. Cemetery And Sundown

We rise with the sun in the underworld
We suffer from a graveless name
We prise wide lids
And wounds with lips curled
Over teeth that have tasted shame

Cemetery and sundown

Against the flora of nightfall
We gather like the fauna of war
To cure Aurora so spiteful
With her stake in the coming of dawn
To conjure forth the past
Those heady nights of pain resplendent
In the service of the Goddess of Death
When her sheets ran royalty red

Moon lengthen or crypt-kept silhouettes
Shadows dance, eyes flicker in descent
Unveil the greed, our needs are bitter, spent
On upturned mouths and haunts of wickedness

We walk this Eden, a secret
Faces hidden under Leonine pride
In dusk's embrace
We find it hard to keep it
When blood and lust and waking worlds collide

Too long have we skulked like drifters
In the cities of the neon sun
Vagabond dogs and graveyard shifters
Mona Lisa's where the paint has run
I miss our glorious past
Our nightly flights on fear dependent
Like phantoms in the eaves for Miss Christine
When the song bird broke her neck

Wolves howl their fogbound serenades
Churches arch their backs with balustrades
Praise be to the shedding of masquerades
When we hunt these vestal vermin unafraid
Of the covenant made...

Draw the blinds on the floors of raw meat
There is murder in the thirst

Rich red vascular tapestries
Hung in gilded frames of nuns asleep
In dreams where themes of bestiality
Are a blessing on their Sunday sheep

Sermons hang a black gown
Over cemetery and sundown

Now the clock is harrying midnight
And the ghost of yet-to-come
Will she show rewrites of dark delight
Or the sewers we've overrun?
I see a winter palace
Cut diamonds at a porcelain neck
When Swan Lake crushed poor sanity's spirit
As I threw her to it bled

We rise with the sun in the underworld
We suffer from a graveless name
We prise wide lids
And wounds with lips curled
Over teeth that have tasted shame

We walk this Eden, a secret
Faces hidden under Leonine pride
In dusk's embrace
We find it hard to keep it
When blood and lust and waking worlds collide.

8. Lovesick For Mina

One might see in Mina
My disease
But it was She who has infected me
For all eternity...

As the sun slips the tearaway stars
Into the scented scheme of night
I kissed her mouth like a dark red rose
Set upon a marbled dream of white
So pure of thought like a Vestal statue
Jewelled with a God-lent grace
I was close to coming when she bid adieu
Fuelled by heartache rent upon her face there

On Mina, obscener
Thoughts obsess my days
Oh Mina, obscener
Thoughts possess me
That I must now obey

They say the darkest hour
Is that before the dawn
When nothing in one's power
Can dissipate the great forlorn
Shadows of fire that haunt me
Like risen whispers of her name

For dawn is a dusk
Wherein needs must
Erupt from the grave, aflame

Written in the dead of night
And riding on the burning wind
Smitten by her read delight
My words alight like leave of sin

Stepping through a mirror
The princess of the emerald glass
Brought me on sip nearer
Love's infernal past...

They say Hell hath no furies
Like a woman scorned by life
When the Heavenly Judge and juries
Participate to chain this wife
With forced virtue, Her secret needs
On warm we nights, with storm-wracked bites
I gave her Eden after the flood

Written in the dead of night
And riding on the burning wind
Smitten by her read delight
My words alight like leaves of sin

Verona, Marishka, Aleera
Brides of old and goddesses all
Forgive my wishes to be always near her
Forever or whenever seas recall

The Aphrodite from my embrace
For as Mars (whom her lips placate)
I tore these shores with wars of hatred
Before our Paris wet his fate
In Helen, one might find mistake
In winning tragedy
For all eternity...

I am still lovesick for Mina
I am still so lovesick for her

9. The Foetus Of A New Day Kicking

I'm chaos international
The writing on the wall
A Lazarus in parable

A dark and sullen lullaby
Whispered softly as you die
Promising torments are nigh

Danger warning levels hissed out loud
I saw the silver lining hidden in a mushroom cloud
Now I'm reeling from the shock at ground zero

If yesterday you would have stood up proud
Then why tonight have you thrown in with the stoning crowd?
I'll breathe through the foetus of a new day kicking...

The foetus of a new day kicking

It's true that Jesus cannot save
I'm rising from the grave
To put my double cross to shame

A poison rush, a heart attack
A white assassin painted black
You'll fear this reaper coming back

Danger warning levels hissed out loud
I saw the silver lining hidden in a mushroom cloud
Now I'm reeling from the shock at ground zero

If yesterday you would have stood up proud
Then why tonight have you thrown in with the stoning crowd?
I'll breathe through the foetus of a new day kicking...

On a night like this
You laid the serpent's kiss
In this garden of Gethsemane
You played the traitor well...

In a dawn to come
I will blind the sun
To grant you pardon as my enemy

Before damning you to hell...

10. Rise Of The Pentagram

One dark afternoon
Like a shadow I flew
Through the rain that fell sick with lament

To this house of incest
For when we undressed
Blasphemies against Venus were rent

Though a sister removed
Her white body approved
The parade of my heavenly quests

Yet, all tongues are not true
Some are forked or askew
Like an uncivil serpent's at best

For ousted from Eden
I fausted all reason
Hook in mouth like Saint Peter Pan

To haunt fairy groves
And hot virgin coves
Where in the promiscuous swam

I elected lovers and rejected others
Mathistrisses that don't give a damn

But for those that still do
My deep interest grew
The rise of the true pentagram!

11. Under Huntress Moon

With the snow fallen thick
And bonfires alit
And shooting stars portents of rips
I ascended to spur
A mere glimpse of murmur
From her precious celestial lips

Be it sun to your moon
"Be it moon to your sun"
Together we promised to come
With a turn of the screw
And a slip of the tongue
We eclipsed one another undone

Through the mist, through the woods
With the night-wraiths I've stood
Atop murderous peaks calling you
On storm-lashed beachheads
Where the fisherman dread
The things your bewitchments accrue

Those deep creatures bring
Her cut diamond rings
A girl with a pearl necklace her
Advancing in fevers
Tsunamis and myrrh
Will she wreak bloody vengeance or purr?

She lights the skies
Dressed in silver scales plucked from the ocean
To spite her thighs
That Lucifer snuck inside
And with his pride
Enclaves were upgraded to Goshen
So paradise
Could shine from out her skirts

"I adorn myself at dusk
With ornaments to close the noose
A kiss as red as blood and cold as hell

My body glows with lust
Anaemic as the flag of truce
I raised at dawn to catch you in my spell"

With every twist I cannot resist her
Fertile female mind control
This wanton witch, white rapids sister
To whom I pour my wine and soul

From a copse of black yews
Where the moon was drawn through
Like a sword through a Gordian knot
She descended to me
Claiming swift victory
Over the heart I had near soon forgot

With every kiss this huntress whispered;
"Yield to my sweet embrace
One night of bliss". I could not dismiss her
Once her beauty shot me a darker face

You mesmerise my soul Diana
You mesmerise my soul

12. Temptation

[Heaven 17 cover]

I've never been closer
I've tried to understand
That certain feeling
Called by another sound
But it's too late to hesitate
We can't keep on living like this

Leave no track
Don't look back

All I desire
Temptation
Keep climbing higher and higher
Temptation
Adorable creatures
Temptation
With unacceptable features
Temptation
And trouble is coming
Temptation
It's just the high cost of loving
Temptation
You can take it or leave it
Temptation
But you'd better believe it

You've got to make me an offer
That cannot be ignored
So let's head for home now
Everything I have is yours
Step by step and day by day
Every second counts I can't break away

Leave no trace
Hide your face

Full of desire
Temptation
Keep climbing higher and higher
Temptation
And you can take it or leave it
Temptation
But you'd better believe it
yeah

Step by step
Day by day
Every second counts
I can't break away

Keep us from temptation [x3]
Lead us not into temptation

Trying to find it
Temptation
You've got to get up behind it
Temptation
Put your dime in the hot slot
Temptation
But it's a million to one shot
Temptation
You think that you're right
Temptation
Your gonna face it tonight now
Temptation
Give me a breakdown
Temptation
Because it's time for a shakedown
Temptation [x16]

[female laughter]

13. HW2

[Japanese bonus track]

[Samhain cover]

14. Murder In The Thirst

[Harder, Darker, Faster: Thornography Deluxe 2008 track]

[Instrumenal]

15. The Snake-Eyed And The Venomous

[Harder, Darker, Faster: Thornography Deluxe 2008 track]

They see me there
Their eyes are everywhere
Sniffing at the linen for the dirt
I feel their burning stare
That hate will later flare
And writhe upon their women full of hurt

Lace magic ink with venom, critics
Milked from infant teeth
Though scathing blows are so arthritic
When they're set on slow repeat

They know I care
Smell storm clouds in the air
Hissing at the bit above my heart
But though I dare
The dyed black route of splitting hairs
I favour not to tempt the poisoned apple cart

I feel two needles rising
Snake eyes are hypnotising
I know they seethe, despising
All that we possess

I feel two needles rising
The truth is always blinding
Their lies, unappetising
Toxins to digest

They breed nightmares
Dark horses of despair
Taking twisted courses in the art
And were I there
To bet my bones on grave affairs
I'd have their guts for garters from the start

I feel two needles rising
Snake eyes are hypnotising
I know they seethe, despising
All that we possess

I feel two needles rising
The truth is always blinding
Their lies, unappetising
Toxins to digest

It's not without hate to crawl flat in the filth
As other less basilisks fly
And brothers are clasped to the breasts of a sylph
As their royal loves slither to die
So shedding dead skin, working true colours loose
Renewing the red in their eyes
They coil like sin within thinning excuse
Cold-blooded to sharpen the lies

Uncivil serpents, race deceivers
Disfigureheads varnished with fevers
Snake-house creepers in our dreams
Of Eden, flee before we mean
To throw the worms out with the waters
Rife with hated spawn
And set a sword to whirl and slaughter
All vipers at the gates of dawn

16. Halloween II

[Harder, Darker, Faster: Thornography Deluxe 2008 track]

eins
zwei
drei
vier

Formulae ueteres exorsismorum et excommunicationum
Strigas et fictos lupinam credere
Metamorphosis lycanthropy
Possunt inquam

Daemon pellem lupinam
Quodam cauae
Arboris occultandum
occultandum [x3]

[Chorus (x3)]
Halloween
Halloween
Halloween
Go, Halloween

Metamorphosis lycanthropy
Possunt inquam
Metamorphosis lycanthropy
Possunt inquam

[Chorus (x3)]

17. Courting Baphomet

[Harder, Darker, Faster: Thornography Deluxe 2008 track]

Wishing in contempt of love
The righteous came to burn our forest
With hissing firebrands
For though we serve the gentle curves
Of our serpent-girdled Eastern Goddess
They thought they caught us
Kissing hearses in their land

Send away the pumpkin carriage
Blind mice in your head
Parade themselves like sacrilegious
Envoys of the dead
For in this house of the dark Madonna
Flesh will pleasure life
For free of sin we would dishonour
All that virgin sacrifice

Gut our city, slaughter all within
Save the gold that goes to God
Show no pity for we worship sin
Spare not the old nor lightning rod

We raise our devil horns
To those who sit on high
For down amidst the thorns
We lie

Tonight the black guards came to rape
And ruin those souls empathising
With fleeing far away
Thrown to the Tigris river curves
Of our star tiara-ed Ishtar rising
They thought they caught us
Courting Baphomet

Courting Baphomet

Gut our city, slaughter all within
Save the gold that goes to God
Show no pity for we worship sin
Spare not the old nor lightning rod

She walked the world
When the world was made to dress
In a perfect darkness
A murderess in flame
Nature curled, unleashed, unfurled
The crack of a whip on the lips of anger
Why would your holy order
Not be wholly slain?

Wishing in contempt of love
The righteous came to burn our forest
With just verses for the damned
For though we serve the gentle curves
Of our serpent-girdled Eastern Goddess
They thought they caught us
Pissing curses in the sand

We raise our devil horns
To those who sit on high
For down amidst the thorns
We lie

We raise our devil horns

18. Stay

[Harder, Darker, Faster: Thornography Deluxe 2008 track]

If this world is wearing thin
And you're thinking of escape
I'll go anywhere with you
Just wrap me up in chains
But if you try to go alone
Don't think I'll understand

Stay with me
Stay with me

In the silence of your room
In the darkness of your dreams
You must only think of me
There can be no in between
When your pride is on the floor
I'll make you beg for more

Stay with me
Stay with me

You'd better hope and pray
That you make it safe
Back to your own world
You'd better hope and pray
That you'll wake one day
In your own world
Cause when you sleep at night
They don't hear your cries
In your own world
Only time will tell
If you can break the spell
Back in your own world

Stay with me
Stay with me
Stay, stay with me
Stay, stay, stay, stay, stay
Stay with me

19. Devil To The Metal

[Harder, Darker, Faster: Thornography Deluxe 2008 track]

Polluting the honesty of Christ with poisoned wine
Laced with lines from the end of time
From the herald and the bugler

High voltage bolts the cellar door
Switch thrown at midnight's peak
To start the heart of a scarlet whore
Gauged infernally

A poetess in night's profane station
Threading lies like silver seas
A seamstress for an amputee nation
Wedded to depravities

Devil to the metal

Diluting the authority of life with sewer brine
Laced with grime from the spiral of time
Wherein spins cruel order

The big hand strokes the Little Horn
Not thrown for charity
To win the sins of the decadent, born
To wage eternally

Passion rides the great unholy
Ipsissimus of love's despair
Her ashen grin would shine, if only
Death would not sit smiling there
Her beauty freezes reason
Like Helen at the reins
Of the rampant horse Apocalypse
On the shore that it was made

Devil to the metal

She fucks at unknown angles
Bleeds her victims to the bone
And in their guts untangled
Casts her runic eyes of stone
She will violate the future
Annihilate the past
Paving way in butcher trades
The red brick road through mankind's arse

Abandon reason, life the veil
Darker seasons are released
Storm crows gather in black masses at the pane

Go to sleep beyond the pale
She is set to murder peace
Rome, Jerusalem and Mecca are aflame

'Under pregnant skies I come alive like Miss Leviathan
Dripping with the ripples of concern
All of heaven's eyes are fixed, as only my desire can
Tear them from the stars I start to burn'







CRADLE OF FILTH LYRICS