Lyrics The Chronicle of Shadows - Bal-Sagoth

The Chronicle of Shadows

The Imperator of the Night
(Hearken to the Attestation of the Sinistrous):
For it is the iniquity of man which compels him to these tenebrous gates,
seeking opiate dreams and the alluring embrace of oblivion…
Know that I have cavorted beneath the horned moon with repellent fiends,
and liberated virgins from the burden of their maidenhood
(Supping deep of that sweet ichor and revelling in the sanguineous megrims my
ophidian tongue has wrought.)
Tyrannic I am where the Serpent dwells, the lissome embrace of the succubi
Like a wolf in the fold, red of tooth and claw, enthroned beneath black
nether-skies
Such adoration bestowed upon me beneath the cryptic moon…
Shadows stalk the viscid gloom, (beware the) blades of the assassins
The call of Ul-Yeh in the air, the crystal skull is shattered
A veil of cloud about the moon, (fevered) dreams of (trenchant) steel and fire
Hearken to the slithering, the envenomed kiss of night
The Imperator of the Night
(Thus Spake the Chronicle of Shadows):
Such adoration bestowed upon me beneath the cryptic moon!
Ah, the sepulchral throng of tortured souls, supine before the pitiless evil of
the abyss…
Caressed by ululant lotus-stained tongues…
(Behold the true purity of that which lurks concealed beneath the mantle of
shadow, and let the deluded, debauched sybarites flee in terror from that
darkness which they profess to embrace!)
On the wings of a charnel wind I return, as the temples of flaccid piety burn…
Caressed by ululant lotus-stained tongues…
Beyond the spheres of light and darkness, beneath distant pallid stars,
I bring the iridescent glimmer of forbidden truth, seared in the crucible of
blasphemy!
And ecstasy shall reside in the inexorable culmination of this sublime
nightmare…
For amorphous they come, steeped in the fetor of ten thousand years
Abhorrent colossi spawned from the sinistrous cosmic spheres
Shadows dance at my bidding, demons execute my every whim…
And upon their tongues, vile secrets so terrible sweet madness is a redolent
balm!
The Imperator of the Night
(Revel in the Triumph of the Dark):
I shall glut the maw of that ineffable nameless evil which lurks forever in the
soul of man, for so it is written in the Chronicle of Shadows…