PRIMORDIAL LYRICS

1. No Grave Deep Enough

All of the God's children they all have to die
Pauper to King sworn enemies to kin
From men without sin to those with the beast within
The grave is absolute, the grave is all

O, Death where are your teeth
That gnaw on the bones of fabled men
O, Death where are your claws
That haul me from the grave

Do you have justice to trump the divine
To steal the sanctity from their sermon
Reduce to ash, writing of piety
And conquer the lord's word
I think you do

Do you bring fear to the hearts of heathens
When your breath is upon their necks
And the Gods will not answer
And the sun is not in the sky

O, Death I am not ready for the grave
So turn your steeds around and loosen your reins
I am not one for the tomb

So rise my brothers, rise from your graves
Throw your shackles off and stand by my side
So rise my brothers, rise from your graves
No grave is deep enough to keep us in chains

2. Lain With The Wolf

I have lain with the lamb
Sang his tender praise on long dark nights
Searched my drawn face long and hard
For a sign of his light
Shoulders to the wheel for the grist of faith
Is manna for the blind
Like a child of Cain without the providence of truth

Joy did come. It rose with the morning sun
Like cold guilty sweat across my brow
These are the first words that fell upon my lips

I have lain with the wolf
He seeks me out and demands my company
In the corner of a crowded room
With words of madness and water of fire

He whispers, when the demons come
Do you make peace with them or do you become one
of them? Do you?
If I give name to my furies, can you name them?
He preaches salvation in the loins of women
And the black sciences

When the shadow fell upon me
I knew I was running with the wolf
And it was his eyes I saw staring back
And this I learnt and this I know
You cannot escape the beast when you wear his mark

3. Bloodied Yet Unbowed

I've told you once I've told you a thousand times
No regrets and no remorse
No 4 am whiskey soaked wisdom or bloody
knuckled politics
Do I regret and not a single moment will I ever
repent

You may say I have lost to a better man
This may be true I cannot protest or lie
Yet maybe one who did not dare to be wrong or
even to be right

To those who did not dare to sing out of tune
Or sing a different song
To march to the beat of a different drum and speak
the truths others fear
Just give me one thing to live or die for

So here's to comrades near and far
So raise a glass, raise your voices
Years have passed some would say
They have not been kind
Yet these are the scars of war
And we remain yet we stand
Bloodied yet unbowed

What is the standard with which I bear
What flag do we fly when marching to war
Only a nation that dare not speak its name
Nor can ever shed its pain

So here's to comrades near and far
Raise a glass, raise hell
Years have passed closer to the grave
But this is the song we chose to sing
To the bitter end, to the end

4. God's Old Snake

Hangman to all mankind
Make your peace
For mother earth lays on her deathbed
Death's rattle echoes

What pale beast
Lurks in the shadow
Great lover revelling in pox
That feeds on filth

God's old snake
We ask for a sign
A revelation
A vision of hell
or blood from stone

We have been to the ends of the earth
Slouched towards Bethlehem
With daggers drawn

So take your bitter pill and wait until dawn
The pound of flesh
Tithe of princes
Wine of salvation

We are searching
The golden redeemer
Who wrote the word of the devil
In the veins of man

If there is a watcher under the earth
Wake him from his fateless sleep
Through the glorious voids of heaving earth
Souls of fire, release me

I have stood at the top of the world
Shook the four winds and called your name
Walked dusty paths on holy hills
Gazed upon black effigies and pressed holy flesh

5. The Mouth Of Judas

I am cut from the cloth, the cloth of Judas
And I've seen his face in mine.
The weathered hands that turn the pages
That are scattered in the sun.
My ship has the blackest sails,
Yet no wind to drive like slaves,
The blackest sails.

You cannot see from shore
That it casts no shadow upon the wave.
The sepulchral crawl, they crawl with us
Over land and sea they hail.

Deadened hands upon the rudder,
They're groaning on the gale.
And they will dash you against the cliffs
'Til every bone is broken.

Jutting rib and gristled knuckle
Is gnashing with the foam,
And I am cut from the cloth of Judas
And the hangman's hand...
And I am cut from the cloth of Judas
And the hangman's hand itself,
And the long stare of condemned
And the cursed song of slaves.

"And you who follow me to make sure
I do not exceed the span given to me on Earth,
I take care, old shadow of a man,
Dead god of all my God's old snake."

Free me from the hangman's hand!
Free me from, please free me from the hangman's noose!
So bend your knee before the majesty of Death!
You struggle for breath and lay the dead head to head
So they stretch from the womb to the grave.
Let us tell you the first journey of Man,
Journey of Man...
That first, the first murder that turned
The soil so red and barren it burns.
So red and barren...

6. The Black Hundred

Here there is no god he is ground to dust
In the death machine of industry
The iron hearse sent on bitter tracks to the Gulag
Suffering forged between the hammer and sickle
The sorrow of men's hearts is a broken people
Nations at the gallows pray for mercy killing
Men of the cloth stand in stretch necked defiance
Famines fist sounds the death knell
The people's utopia moulds an industrial horizon
Rusted Vostok in the lap of the Gods

"I want to burn, give me the funeral pyre
Long was life, but my life's waking short
The highest of my father's sacraments
To climb towards heaven on a towering flame
And scream out the injustice by which
My nation with fiery iron was beset and slaughtered"

[Vizcma Belgenvica]

7. The Puritan's Hand

There is plague at the door
It begs to be among us
In the ashen dreams of crippled children

There is sickness in the soil
Nothing grows this side of Eden
Nor in the yearning abyss
That is all things to men's hearts
Nor in the skeletal tug
Of motherhood that curses all with life

There is disease upon the air
It grasps at the throat of virtue
Rosary twist in leather hands
And offer prayer for me

And I have fought the god of men
For my whole life
Yet now we sit at the table together
Breaking bread and drinking blood wine

We spent the smallest hours
Staring into the void
Between sleep and dreams
That stretch from the womb to the grave
So feel the puritan's dead hand as it throttles all life

So clasp your hands and bend your broken knees
For no one else will, and your confessions
Of worthless guilt, are not your saving grace
And so you seek redemption at the puritan's hand
Is the hell you find here not enough for you?
To find your redemption

8. Death Of The Gods

We stood on the shoulders of giants
Like atlas with the burden of faith
We clasped our hands—our hands in praise
Of a conqueror's right to tyranny
And this is a language that has not passed
Our lips in one thousand—one thousand years

So heretics I call to you
And partisans stand as one
And rebels raise your voices
If not then all is lost

And this is the death of the Republic and make no mistake
The senate is lost and Zeus is laughing
So Mars God of war can you hurl a lightning bolt
To smash the temple of the blind
The Tiber is over—is over-flowing with the blood of innocent men

So heretics I call to you
And partisans stand as one
And rebels raise your voices
If not then all is lost

And so we stood, among thieves, liars and murderers
Whose names shall live in eternal rest and infamy
Disgraced kings enshrined with their pious men
Who ruled us all with the bloodied spear of destiny

You knew my name before I was born
You knew my death from the moment it passed my lips

And this is the death of the Republic
It's dead and gone with Pearse in the grave
And we are haunted to the end by the ghosts of Connolly's army
And skeletal fingers are on the trigger of Collins' demise
And Parnell's—his dreams are turned to nothing but dust

"And I say to my people's masters: beware, beware of the thing that is coming, beware of the risen people, who shall take what ye would not give.
Did ye think to conquer the people, or that law is stronger than life and than men's desire to be free?"
[Padraig Pearse, "The Rebell"]







PRIMORDIAL LYRICS