[(1. Once Upon Atrocity)]

[Instrumental]

[(2. Thirteen Autumns And A Widow)]

Spawned wanton like blight on an auspicious night Her eyes betrayed spells of the moon's eerie light A disquieting gaze forever ghosting far seas Bled white and dead, Her true mother was fed To the ravenous wolves that the elements led From crag-jagged mountains that seemingly grew in unease

Through the maw of the woods, a black carriage was drawn Flanked by barbed lightning that hissed of the storm (Gilded in crests of Carpathian breed) Bringing slaves to the sodomite for the new-born On that eve when the Countess' own came deformed A tragedy crept to the name Bathory

Elizabeth christened, no paler a rose Grew so dark as this sylph None more cold in repose Yet Her beauty spun webs Round hearts a glance would betroth

She feared the light So when She fell like a sinner to vice Under austere, puritanical rule She sacrificed... Mandragora like virgins to rats in the wall But after whipangels licked prisoners, thralled Never were Her dreams so maniacally cruel (And possessed of such delights) For ravens winged Her nightly flights Of erotica Half spurned from the pulpit Torments to occur Half learnt from the cabal of demons In Her Her walk went to voodoo To see Her own shadow adored At mass without flaw Though inwards She abhored Not Her coven of suitors But the stare of their Lord

"I must avert mine eyes to hymns For His gaze brings dogmas to my skin He knows that I dreamt of carnal rites With Him undead for three long nights"

Elizabeth listened No sermons intoned Dragged such guilt to Her door Tombed Her soul with such stone For She swore the Priest sighed When She knelt down to atone...

She feared the light So when She fell Like a sinner to vice Under austere, puritanical rule She sacrificed Her decorum as chaste To this wolf of the cloth Pouncing to haunt Her confessional box Forgiveness would come When Her sins were washed off By rebaptism in white....

The looking glass cast Belladonna wreaths 'Pon the grave of Her innocence Her hidden face spat murder From a whisper to a scream All sleep seemed cursed In Faustian verse But there in orgiastic Hell No horrors were worse Than the mirrored revelation The She kissed the Devil's phallus By Her own decree...

So with windows flung wide to the menstrual sky Solstice Eve She fled the castle in secret A daughter of the storm, astride Her favourite nightmare On winds without prayer Stigmata still wept between Her legs A cold bloodedness which impressed new hatreds She sought the Sorceress Through the snow and dank woods to the sodomite's lair

Nine twisted fates threw hewn bone die For the throat of Elizabeth Damnation won and urged the moon In soliloquy to gleam Twixt the trees in shafts To ghost a path Past the howl of buggered nymphs In the sodomite's grasp To the forest's vulva Where the witch scholared Her In even darker themes

"Amongst philtres and melissas Midst the grease of strangled men And eldritch truths, elder ill-omen Elizabeth came to life again"

And under lacerations of dawn She returned Like a flame unto a deathshead With a promise to burn Secrets brooded as She rode Through mist and marsh to where they showed Her castle walls wherein the restless Counted carrion crows

She awoke from a fable to mourning Church bells wringing Her madly from sleep Tolled by a priest, self castrated and hung Like a crimson bat 'neath the belfry The biblical prattled their mantras Hexes six-tripled their fees But Elizabeth laughed, thirteen Autumns had passed And She was a widow from god and His wrath, finally...

[(3. Cruelty Brought Thee Orchids)]

Hear Me now! All crimes should be treasured if they bring thee pleasure somehow...

Maleficent in dusky rose Gathered satin lapped Her breasts Like blood upon the snow A tourniquet of Topaz Glistened at Her throat Awakening, pulled from the tomb Her spirit freed eclipsed the moon That She outshone as a fallen star A regal ornament from a far flung nebular

Her likeness hung in the black gallery Commanding unease Demanding of Death to breathe...

Midst the whirl and daylight fauna Of society at court Elizabeth bedazzled, Her presence sought applause Though Her torchlit shadow Thrown upon damp cellar walls Greeted nothing but despair from slaves Her nights enthralled

Thirteen Winter solstices had shown Her path, that the dark Had marked its dominion Spaying the confessor Whose caresses she'd known, As whipcord in the House of Dog Her cold cunt meat on holy bone

Raped of faith, She now embraced The narcissistic unrest frozen on the mirror's face With this disdain, inside these veins (Highborn wanton that She was) She sought to keep what age would claim Her soul was sold and for this toll Reeking pyres ever smouldered On the whims of one so in control Elizabeth, mysterious. Cruelty brought thee orchids From the bowels of the abyss

Once upon atrocity when midwitches stifled cries And carved abortive runes in reddened wombs Exhumed by scrying eyes Madness came upon Her like an amourous lover's seed Lifesblood splashed upon Her skin In gouts torture unleashed

And to Her dead reflection Twas as if Her pallor gleamed Like an angel's warmed by candles Where erotic stains had cleaved So demons dragged this libertine Lusts screaming for release Upon the flesh of maidens preened As canvas for caprice

Exacting obeisance Her gaze held a seance Of spirits too trapped under glass to commune A sleeter mistress than Luna Whose threats to consume Her Met with torments giving vent to Her swoon

Flat on Her back Pack-prey for the reams Of verses and curses That haunted Her dreams Midnightmare chimed Thirteen in Her mind A disciple of scars Branded years hissed behind Ridden split-thighed By the Father of lies An ovation of wolves Blushed the skies as they writhed

But Heaven is never forever She came, a spent storm From the clouds...

Leaving serpents in office Inside every gate To lick righteous holes Blinding Lords to the fate Of virgins forced naked To defile on rent knees Hacked and racked backwards Menses choking their pleas

"More. Whore. More. Twitching make me wet with thee Carcass rub me raw"

[(4. Beneath The Howling Stars)]

Midwinter wrongs the rites of Spring Her spinal chill rakes the earth Whilst pensive souls at zero sing Woebetidings of rebirth Under cold stares of Mars maligned Near-suicides cross their hearts And unborns writhe in tepid brine For something wicked this way starts

Beneath the howling stars

Elizabeth, paragon of vice Watches the sun set pyres alight As Bane and Tyranny, Her Dobermans sleep Like spellbound paramours at Her feet

A chatter of bells without Raise hellhounds, teeth on edge From sleighs hastened through snow lit red Guests espied from the garret ledge

Great gloomy mirror tell Her face She will outblind them all That heavenly bodies would fall from grace To possess such a lustrous pall

For beauty is always Cruel... For beauty is always... (Let destiny in chains commence... Damnation under Gods seeking recompense Enslaving to the whims of this mistress)

As the dance ensued Elizabeth's mood Tempered by the craft of a vitreous moon In slick black iciness it grew To consume The wench Her tower tombed Tending to Her costume Bore the brunt of the storm When the needle askewed She has Her dogs maul the bitch's wrists through Restored to jaded bliss This evisceratrix Descended to the ball With painted blood upon Her lips Passing like a comet so white As to eclipse The waltz wound down, transfixed

Devoid of all breath in the air Even Death paled to compare To the taint of Her splendour So rare and engendered 'Pon the awed throng gathered There...

Beneath the howling stars

She danced so macabre Men entranced divined from Her gait That this angel stepped from a pedestal Had won remission from fate By alighting to darker spheres Delighting in held sway For She was not unlike the Goddess To whom the wolves bayed

"Whilst envy glanced daggers From court maidens, arboured Who whispered in sects Of suspicions abroad That Elizabeth bewitched See how even now the whore casts Her spells upon the Black Count Whom Her reddened lips hold fast"

Tongue unto tongue Swept on tides without care For the harpies who rallied Their maledict glares A halo of ravens tousled Her hair Chandeliers a tiara For passions ensnared

"Phantasies sexed When their eyes, moonstruck met Their friction wore a way Through the sea of foreplay Lovers at first bite She an Eve tempted to lay Gasping at rafters Flesh pressed in ballet"

But caprice, honours leashed She absconded the feast To prowl wonderland Beasts in hand from the Keep Of Feudal dilemma Well mantled in furs Through cullis to watch Dogstars howl at the earth

On this violent night Unholy night Winds lashed their limbs together As the ether vent its wintry spite

She wished His kiss on Her frozen landscapes To excite the bleak advance From castle bowers Wherein small hours The Devil never came by chance A lone charm tied to Her inner thigh Sent lusts nova as hooves trod Cobbled streets where lowlives fleet Were flung to a wayward god

Beneath the howling stars

Pounding upon the pauper ridge Earshot of a hunched beldame Elizabeth teased, would He dare to please Such elderly loins enflamed? To this He feigned a grim disdain Playing to Her slayful eye But the hag replied...

"This girl that chides Will soon be as plagued with age as I"

Her consort laughed a plume of icy breath For Elizabeth's grace could raise A flag of truce in burning heaven Or the dead from early graves Yet still She seethed This proud Snow Queen Embittered with the cursed retort And because He sought Her loves onslaught He gutted the crone for sport

Soon in full moon fever they were wed Lycanthropic in the conjugal bed Littered with aphrodisiacs To tease dynastic union And beget them further maniacs

Elizabeth Free reigned, now a Countess Outwielded and outwore Her title like a favoured dress Whilst Her errant Lord Whose seasons savoured war Stormed black to fell the infidel Her embers, tempered, roared.

[(5. Venus In Fear)]

[Instrumental]

[(6. Desire In Violent Overture)]

Nights came tralling ghost concertos Heartstrings a score of skeletal reaper bows Playing torture chamber music allegretto Conducting over throes trashed to crescendo

Skinless the dark shall scream Hoarse Her symphonies

Deathmashed as the moon That had lifted Her dreams And frowned on the winding steps down To where the vulgar strayed, Taunting sick Her tender prey She glided in Her bridal gown

How sleep the pure Desire in Violent Overture

An emanation of phantom madness The Countess beheld in shroud By girls bereft of future vows Soon to wed in white the frosted ground Burning like a brand on the countenance of god A yearning took Her hand to His Seraphim, bound

Deep red hissed the cat whips On the whim of ill-will Whilst She entranced, nonchalant, abliss Flayed further songs of overkill

How weep the pure Desire in Violent overture

In a crescent-whime cellar of crushed roses Pooled blood and broken dolls A torchlit shadow theatre souled With the echoed cries of lives She stole

Killing time She struck the hours dead In Her control Thus menopaused Her clock of hacked out cunts Began to toll

"Thirteen chimes of ancient strain I conjure forth with dirge That fills the void with timbred pain To fulfil my sexual urge"

Frights came wailing from the Darkside Haunting lipless mouths a fugue of arcane diatribes Velvet, their voices coffined Her in slumber Bespattered and appeased As pregnant skies outside bore thunder

How sleep the pure Desire in violent overture

As when high winds Attune whipped trees Her savage nature pitched Would once again conduct the pleas Of those She loved to agonies

As if it were The first time every night That She carved Her seal In the flesh of life.

[(7. The Twisted Nails Of Faith)]

"Mirror, mirror on the wall Shouldst not grave pleasures be my all? For if I shall see thy Will be done Grant Me the Witchcraft of thy tongue"

Three moondials froze in the shadow of six As another soul passed to the grasping Styx Clutching their trinket crucifix Bats blew from caves in a dissonant surge Omens of corruption from within the church A fetid, dank oasis still clung to fool rebirth

Alone as a stone cold altar The castle and its keep Like faerytale dominion rose A widow to the snow peaks Wherein reclined the Countess Limbs purring from the kill Bathed in virgin white and like the night Alive and young and unfulfilled

Was it the cry of a wolf That broke the silver thread of enchanted thoughts? Of Her life as a mere reflection (As the moon's in narrow windows caught) That opened like dark eyelids on The sigh of the woods that the wind fell upon

Like a Siren weaving song From the lilt of choirs choking Where the vengeful dead Belong...

To the Sorceress and Her charnel arts She swept from ebon towers at the hour of Mars 'Neath a star-inwoven sky latticed by scars To unbind knotted reins that kept in canter, despair Shod on melancholy, fleet to sanctuary there, In netherglades tethered where onyx idols stared

Was it the Kiss of the mist That peopled the air with the prowess of absinthe? Lost souls begging resurrection From Gods upon their forest plinths Whose epitaphs read of re-ascending to win Remission from despair through a holocaust of sin

In a tongue hilted in invective rectums Over signs and seals the sorceress prayed To Death, to rend the slender veil That Ancient Ones might rise again

As shadows swelled The Countess fell To masturbating with Her dagger As the Witch gabbled spells Cumming heavy roses all the way to Hell As sudden thunder's grue harangue Announced two pincered worlds

Exuding bane, something came With the stench of necrophiled graves To these clandestines Who shrank from glimpsing horror That the growls of mating houls inclined...

Resplendent In pendants (Natal trophies torn from bellies of desanctified nuns) A demons, bewinged, bedight In scum, prowled their circle seeking entry to run An arctic tongue upon Her vulva Where rubies smeared to alabaster thighs Glittered like a contract in the purse of a whore Receiving sole communion from the body of christ

"If blood is what thou carves, foul fiend I will yield this witch to thee If thou wouldst draw a veil for Me O'er lengthening scars of age and grief"

As the Demon slavered foetid vows And bore His prey away In talons itching to perpetrate The nausea of eternal rape The Sorceress screaming in His grasp Spat a final curse to stain The Countess with the promise That Her lord at war would be cruelly slain

And She would rot. Alone Insane. On the twisted nails of faith.

[(8. Bathory Aria)]

[(I. Benighted Like Usher)]

Snuffed tapers sighed As Death left impressing His crest of cold tears on the Countess

Benighted like ill-fated Usher The House of Bathory shrouded 'Neath griefs dark facade

If only I could have wept In mourning by Her side I would have clasped Her so tight Like storm-beached Aphrodite Drowned on Kytherean tides

And Kissed Her For from Her alone My lips would have known Enigmas of shadowy vistas

Where pleasures took flesh And pain, remorseless Came freezing the breath Of raucous life hushed unto whispers

Benighted.

Inhaling the pale waning moonlight that crept Through the crypt of Her Lord who so lucidly slept

Benighted.

Exhaling the wail of black widowhood's toll Waxing eternal night entered Her soul

[(II. A Murder of Ravens in Fugue)]

Now haranguing grey skies With revenge upon life Gnathic and Sapphic Needs begged gendercide

Delusions of Grandier denounced the revolt Of descrying cursed glass, disenchanted in vaults Encircled by glyphs midst Her sin-sistered cult

With hangman's abandon She plied spiritworlds To Archangels in bondage From light to night hurled Cast down to the earth where torment would unfurl.......

But soon, Her tarot proved Hybrid rumours spread like tumours Would accrue And blight Her stars To better bitter truths Of cold bloodbaths

As bodies rose In rigid droves To haunt Her from their Shallow burials imposed When wolves exhumed Their carthen wombs Where heavy frosts had laboured long To bare their wounds

To the depths of Her soul they pursued Wielding their poison they flew Like a murder of ravens in fugue

And knowing their raptures Would shatter Her dreams She clawed blackened books for damnation's reprieve Baneful cawed canons on amassed enemies

So Hallow's Eve As She received Like Bellona to the ball Those enemies Fell-sisters heaved Her torturies Cross stained flagstones To Her carriage reined to flee

But She knew She must brave the night through Though fear crept a deathshead o'er the moon Like a murder of ravens in Fugue

For each masked, jewelled gaze held dread purpose Horror froze painted eyes to cold stares And even Her dance In the vast mirrors cast Looked the ill of Her future If fate feasted there....

[(III. Eyes That Witnessed Madness)]

In an age crucified by the nails of faith When rank scarecrows of christ blighted lands An aloof Countess born an obsidian wraith Dared the abyss knowing well She was damned Her life whispered grief like a funeral march Twisted and yearning, obsessed an entranced With those succumbing to cruelty Crushed 'neath the gait of Her dance A whirlwind of fire that swept through the briers Of sweet rose Her thickets of black thorn had grasped...

She demanded the Heavens and forever to glean The elixir of Youth from the pure Whilst Her lesbian fantasies Reamed to extremes O'er decades unleashed Came for blood's silken cure

But Her reign ended swiftly For Dark Gods dreamt too deep To heed Her pleas

When Her gaolers were assailed With condemnations from a priest Who'd stammered rites In the dead of night For maidens staining winding sheets

And She postured proud When Her crimes were trowelled And jezebelled to peasant lips Though She smelt the fires That licked limbs higher To the tortured cunts of accomplices

So ends this twisted fable's worth And though spared the pyre's bite By dint of nobled bloodlined birth Her sins (crimes) garnered Her no respite

Forever severed from the thrill of coming night Where slow Death alone could grant Her flight

"The Spirits have all but fled judgement I rot, alone, insane, Where the forest whispers puce laments for me From amidst the pine and wreathed wolfsbane Beyond these walls, wherein condemned To the gloom of an austere tomb I pace with feral madness sent Through the pale beams of a guiltless moon Who, bereft of necrologies, thus Commands creation over the earth Whilst I resign my lips to death A slow cold kiss that chides rebirth Though one last wish is bequathed by fate My beauty shalt wilt, unseen Save for twin black eyes that shalt come to take My soul to peace or Hell for company"

My soul to Hell for company

[(9. Portrait Of The Dead Countess)]

[Instrumental]

[(10. Lustmord And Wargasm (The Lick Of Carnivorous Winds)]

An Archangel in bondage Bediademed, souled With a murder of ravens But no less Astarte to behold Abandoned by Heaven To the dead, dark and past Cast Her dispersions On life's brittle glass

And though Her eyes still held fire As stonewalls caged the beast 'Gainst the lassitudes of Death She fought but fell to greet And midst lies in collusion She was martyred to teach That "Divinity and Lust Are forever forbidden to meet"

But I swore that they would Before the veil could part our embrace Twixt Her cold, silent hips I kissed And promised Christendom in flames

Gravid with madness Like a feculent dirge That obsesses the heart I am covened by words

To avenge Her Ebon splendour And surrender My soul to the dead to achieve Prophecies of libidinous scourge Horripilation braying o'er carious herds

Vexing nightmares And their weak prayers To a no one there To hinder Her decree

To weed the world of their disease

As shadows unblind mine eyes to see The meat that is their congregation

How they plead to the skies But this is mere foreplay to war

Scar-riddled saffron eves bleed like the conjugal Vestal daughters giving throat to the priest A psychophant, the despoiler of faith Now His skinless crucifixion feeds a winged diocese

For Her interred I tore a battle banner from His hide Splashed in red goetia Hues of Hell and deicide So came the night Its obsidian light Is a master whom disasters Suck upon like concubines And under black skirts That whisper of delight Darkseeds near fruition Darked deeds to marry mine

"In Death's bed I have lain Paying lip-service to shame But for dreaming of thee I regain A reason to seek life again"

Then we smite the divine For our true nature is sin To strip tender flesh from these swine Like the lick of carnivorous winds

The breath of the storm that begins By forcing its Herod tongue in The womb of the holy virgin To taste of immaculate sin

From temptation's peak we will see The world unfurled at last Now the wolves of time who stalk Mankind Shall be as one in grim repast

Commemorating sickle moons The pack are poised to reap A scythe of white roses in bloom Whose twisted thorns will keep A crown upon a dead man Daylights crucified in sleep And lives that hide in scriptured lies To the memories of a scream

And we shall dance amid the ruin As Adam and Evil Dizzy at the falling stars That burn fiercer in throes of upheaval

If all must we damn for this moment Then it shall be so For our souls have crossed oceans of time To clasp one another more tightly Than Death could alone...

As Zyklon beats reign to make carrion crawl The talons of lust rake a clarion call To the lick of carnivorous winds

The lick of carnivorous winds

[(11. Lustmord And Wargasm (The Relicking Of Cadaverous Wounds)]

[Bonus track]