Cryptoriana: The Seductiveness Of Decay (2017)

• Exquisite Torments Await
• Heartbreak And Seance
• Achingly Beautiful
• Wester Vespertine
• The Seductiveness Of Decay
• Vengeful Spirit
• You Will Know The Lion By His Claw
• Death And The Maiden
• The Night At Catafalque Manor
• Alison Hell 

Exquisite Torments Await lyrics - Cradle of Filth

Abandon hope all ye who enter here

For herein lies the path to sadness

The poetry of woe set midst the sweet lament of fear

Carouses in fantasia like spirits cast to madness

Here we pray

Severe, the day

Dies irae

Dies illa

Dies tribulationis

Et angustiæ

Dies calamitatis

Et misteriæ

Dies tenebarum

Et caliginis

Dies nebulæ

Et turbinis

Dies tubæ

Et clangoris...

Fresh meat now tests these jaws of death

Heartbreak And Seance lyrics - Cradle of Filth

Before the war, this grave darksome pall

Pressed upon the face of England

We were sovereign to nothing less

Than the map of our souls solicitous to reign

Together in a peace these wicked times disdain

Then Empire saw much more to gain

The Crown discounts our loss

Life cannot count the cost

These numbers fount like water

The dead, the dying, those on route to slaughter

Valentine, sweet spine entwined

I am sorry that I left you here, in time

I will find the path back from the other side

So keep a candle burning in your heart that is my shrine

No Memento Mori

For he passed away, for faraway glory

So tear the pages from this castaway story

Spilling tears fill her lachrymatory

She seeks to pierce the veil

Melancholia speaks the fiercest tale

Weeks are growing lonelier ever stonier regaled

Love's bond responding beyond the pale

The planchette is promissory

Purveyance of the seance

In obeisance

To the spirits before their dismissory

The Crown discounts our loss

Life cannot count the cost

These numbers fount like water

The dead, the dying, those on route to slaughter

Valentine, sweet spine entwined

I am sorry that I left you here, in time

I will find the path back from the other side

So please accept my kisses through the whispers of the Ouija board

I suffer alone

So far from home

Watching you from a distance

A shadow's persistence to roam

No time to atone

You flower alone

Beautifully graven

You cut a black raven

Whose tower has flown

No Memento Mori

For he passed away, for faraway glory

So tear the pages from this castaway story

Spilling tears fill her lachrymatory

She seeks to pierce the veil

Melancholia speaks the fiercest tale

Weeks are growing lonelier ever stonier regaled

Love's bond responding beyond the pale

The planchette is promissory

Purveyance of the seance

In obeisance

To the spirits ghosts that haunt amiss amie

Winter seems far colder

Without you by my shoulder

Now this year

Faith's blinding glare advanced to frost

Finds her there, entranced to cross

To breach death's porous border

And reach where breath affords no quarter

Helpless, I see her resolve harden

This is where it ends

How the wretchedness portends

The knife in her hand on the stretch to the promised land

And this is how they found my light

Clutching tight that fateful telegram

Achingly Beautiful lyrics - Cradle of Filth

Night, that fateful raven alighted on the cusp of my bewitchment

The beast in the clouds had swallowed the moon

A silverback thundering across the cosmos

In silence now stars followed her tune

Winking from existence on the brink of chaos

I penned an open sonnet, to the pearly gates ablaze

As I gazed upon this angel intoxicating everything

The ball became her court, her presence there electrifying

Candelabra fought, to tear themselves away

She was a flame, divine

My pathic call of duty, irrefutable

Her eyes they paralyzed me, froze the flow of time

A glimpse so achingly beautiful

Fleeing from the manor in the manner of this crime

We sheltered from the pelting, helter-skelter of the skies

In the Greek gazebo, speaking tragedian rhyme

Death would never settle, for one petal at a time

He would pluck

Lo, this malleus eve, is heaving to the pulse of souls

She was the game, sublime

A Knight takes Queen in ruby, Indisputable

Then her eyes, they paralyzed me for a second time

A glimpse so achingly beautiful

Drinking in her flora this Aurora to the storm

I was burning in the furnace of a love that went to war

With ravenous desire, fires lit the heavens for

Caressing in the rainfall, a less painful metaphor

For this hunger

On marbled tomb

Breathless, cocooned

A long red dress shrouds, like Ophelia, this Goddess

Mourning then crawls

Black velvet palled

To pass fervent lips, betwixt her deliciousness

Miserere Mei Diva

Forgive me forever my bride

But a gift was delivered, however perverse

On that night you exquisitely died

(Seraphina rise)

Arcane perfection, her legend was etched

(To queen demon revised)

A fell resurrection, unparalleled in this world or next

Awaken, forsaken, by others so taken as prey

Now you shall stand in the grandeur of love

A wonderland in which to play

The beast in the clouds spat back the moon

And arrayed in a crown of glittering cobwebs

She slid to her feet like a prophet of doom

Born to immortal darkness as mortality slipped away

She was a flame, divine

My gnathic call of duty, irrefutable

Her eyes imparadised me with their wicked shine

A glimpse so achingly beautiful

Now she stirs the night just like the perfect Lorelei

As she spurs the dark horse foaming in my soul

Death is fleet, sweet, oft discreet, the beast in beauty's mask

Her skies, bediademed, complete, now freed of days grown overcast

Wester Vespertine lyrics - Cradle of Filth

Today was spent in languor

Drifting through the fold

As midsummer vent its clamour

In cobbled streets a thousandfold

I bore cruelty from the sun

The jewellery that it hung

About me, God it stung

Like life's betrayal

Now shadows lengthening

Hear the nightside sing

The promise of delightful things to come

Wester Vespertine

When the sun is in decline

Reddened skies underlined in purple

Exemplify cries, goodbyes are verbal

Bats carouse about the tree line

Daylight bows out, free and feline

And dusk comes so sublime

So wester Vespertine

Feel the rush of power this magickal hour

The heavens blaze, their flames devour

The smoke of ruins black against

A bled horizon, mystic, incensed

Nightfall is dressed in fantasy

Ethereal, the end of day enthralls

Voyeurs watching from the stalls

It enfolds the drear and drab

Lifts our hearts to sheer romantic

Pyromantic, necromantic heights

Of bright sensation

Feel the rush of power this magickal hour

The Heavens blaze, the angels cower

Wisps of sulphur at my lips

The abyss at kissed fingertips

Nightfall is blessed by majesty

This night will see indictment

For my needs extol

The virtues of excitement

This soul reigns uncontrolled

Sweet scents, the vents of Mother Earth

Have lent to my rebirth

Her perfume is perverse

And that's the way I like it

Bethlem is opening

Her terrifying wings

The promise of its frightful things to sperse

Hesperus will shine

Out foremost as stars climb

And dusk comes so sublime

So wester Vespertine

Feel the rush of power this magickal hour

The moon invades the vestal bower

Gas lamps flicker in devotion

Like fireflies on an iron ocean

Nightfall is best left to telestic needs

Crepuscular

This theatre is spurred

To drive the painted nails home

And let man's blithe desires roam

About the city lit to please

The pretty bits this August eve

Revive our sore and tortured souls

Revive my mortared soul

Toward the end

Toward the splendour

Like Lot, the host gives up its ghosts

His gorgeous daughters now surrender

Lammas glamour

Hammered in the dying light

Like a glowing hot sabre set to clangour on the anvil

We'll bang destiny to rights now

Wester Vespertine

This is our time to taste

To chase, to embrace, to lay to waste to the vine

The cup of fornication is a decadent red wine

Wester Vespertine

When the sun is in decline

Reddened skies underlined in purple

Exemplify cries, goodbyes are verbal

Bats carouse about the tree line

Daylight bows out, free and feline

And dusk comes so sublime

So wester Vespertine

The Seductiveness Of Decay lyrics - Cradle of Filth

Silked like a ghost in infinite splendour

The moon illumes like a madness vendor

Lycaning hosts to a coarse surrender

Frightening most lest the offend her reign

Proletariat enslaved

In whoredom with Moloch

London run amok is Sodom bathed

In an eerie light and a sickening fog

This city is a beautiful spider

With a poison welling inside her

That subdues and loots her prey

A web to tarry souls compelling them to

Duly stay

Fantasmagoriana's on its way

This mist, carousing off the Thames

Its sallow tendrils bend

The will of many men

To morbid fascination

How the full asylums howl

With madness on the prowl

And all the maidens bow

To the skeletal

Squalor King Cholera

Here the age grows more unholier

Careered, with fear

Beneath the veil of melancholia

Now the smoke stacks darken skies

The caress of death is on the rise

Its choking breath, romanticised

And dressed in gothic veneration

Funereal this bride

Wedded to the dead inside

Blackest magick, Whitechapel paved

Penny Bloods delight in

The tragic splay of rifled graves

And suicided spirit guides the circle is inviting

Evil dances under many guises

Pristine masks shadow terrible vices

Sins enhanced, Lucifer entices near

Here the age grows more unholier

Careered, with fear

Beneath the veil of melancholia

Now the smoke stacks darken skies

The caress of death is on the rise

Its choking breath, romanticised

And dressed in greatest expectations

Thin wings lay on the ground

Bound for the pound

Of the beckoning reckoning

Infatuation with the mysterious

Frights are writing better chapter and verse

Intoxication, hearts are not averse

To circus freaks and black waxworks

Those that the grace of God denied

Become divertissement to curb

The bitter taste from glittered lives

Modernity perturbs

Horror Victorianum

Syphilitic, spiritualistic

Rot is set to stay

Horror Victorianum

Phantasmogenic, psychogenic

Sotted minds are bled astray

Behind the grind of Imperialistic overkill

Industrious teeth sank deep into the red map

Workhouses, grist for Satanic treadmills

Spew offspring back intact

In fact far closer to collapse

And the pooling lamp of science in defiance of the Lord

Its hallowed tallow burning with discord

Is born of midnight trysts with Resurrectionists

Body snatchers, child catchers

The Necropolis built on top of this

Is an Empire fit for ghouls

Is an Empire fit for ghouls

Here the age grows more unholier

Careered, with fear

Beneath the veil of melancholia

Now the smoke stacks darken skies

The caress of death is on the rise

Its choking breath, romanticised

And dressed in cloaked abomination

Aberration

A mourning nation cries

Vengeful Spirit lyrics - Cradle of Filth

A storm to break steeples is nigh

I feel it in my deviant pathology

The autumn leaves no longer sigh

But instead hiss a virulent cacophony

Stricken in the dead of night

Fear quickens me to flee or fight

This otherworldly parasite

Who stalks my very dreams

Sickened by this atmosphere

Blood's slickening everything in here

Nightmares are liars to commandeer

And furnish with my screams

She seeks control

So disaster will follow me

Please free my soul

Before her darkness can swallow me

I tasted betrayal

I was a fool

I will never relent

I am agony sent

Vengeance in the still hungry sights of a ghoul

The snow and roses

Of youth have passed away

Yet still she haunts me

In truth I stay her prey

Further down the habit hole

I fall feigning greater escapology

But drugs do nothing but extol

The here and now

And not venomous ghostology

I was hers but chose

Another for my own

And everybody knows

Suicide is for the solo...

My loved ones swoon to her embrace

For them a tomb will soon encase

Their spilled remains, the cursed chase

Begins for me afresh

Adverse Venus of the rites

Hearse of perverse appetites

Her thirst, it worsens and invites

A creeping of the flesh

She seeks control

So disaster will follow me

Please free my soul

Before her darkness can swallow me

I tasted betrayal

I was a fool

I will never relent

I am agony sent

Vengeance in the still hungry sights of a ghoul

I tasted betrayal

Misplaced and cruel

I will never relent

I am agony sent

Vengeance in the still hungry sights of a ghoul

In the still hungry sights of a ghoul

First a gelid whisper

Then the candlelight cavorts in sympathy

For where once it was murder to resist her

Paralysis of terror stills the urge to flee

The demon enters

Swathed in a fell bestiality

She this vengeful wraith tormentor

I pray the time has come for Hell to set me free

You Will Know The Lion By His Claw lyrics - Cradle of Filth

Purring, the sweet-tempered soughing

Of lucrative savannah winds,

Stirs the great flotsam of clouds that vowing to usher the evening in

Affecting the set of the reckoning sun

From burnished gold to crimson hue

Before this night is quite sorely undone

The devil is coming from you

Like a ghost haunting the darkness

Stalking the veldt

Where many kings were felled

A savage growling rakes this grassy vastness

Halting you in the tracks you've laid

To rule this fulsome world

Now silent as a wisp of smoke

Terror grips you by the throat

You will know the lion by his claw

Mistaking fake demeanor

Was your first and fatal flaw

Never will the hunter ever be the hunted here or evermore

Taking my arena

Brought this courted slaughter to your door

I am nature's great restorer

First order Carnivora

Fate and foe, no time to implore

Mercy for she has fled

Tail tucked between her legs

Circled prey, recant and beg

To me alone, this powder keg

Of teeth and jaws together

In a riot of adventure

I am Leonine and ten commandments

Cut deep for your death

Damnatio ad bestias

Damnatio ad bestias

Through limitless whispering seas

Of redolent tropical plains

Whereupon mystery's blistery frieze

A silvering gibbous moon reigns

Aggressive, obsessive to snuff out your lights

I come a cold virulent grue

Blighting your guides and delighting inside

On the pride that is tiding for you

As a beast feasting its hunger

Under the spell

Rifles and fire shall not repel

Industrious machinations rent asunder

No miring me in traps well-laid

I'll not pale to unveil my Hell

You will know the lion by his claw

This violence is a plague of flame

Licking the brush to flush out game

A bellow of rage caged in yellow eye

Sees evil life seized, unleashed reprisal

You will know the lion by his claw

Mistaking fake demeanor

Was your first and fatal flaw

Never will the hunter ever be the hunted here or evermore

Taking my arena

Brought this courted slaughter to your door

You will know the lion by his claw

Now hear the growing thunder roar

The walls of blackish thorn have fallen batterfang and chaos

Quick to marshal, maul the fools

Who stand by shattered loss

Your shadow scatters westward

Toward the fleeing stars

As a new dawn feeds upon the skies

Heraldic, rampant, battle-scarred

Damnatio ad bestias

Damnatio ad bestias

Death And The Maiden lyrics - Cradle of Filth

I spy the spreading fear

That crawls wormlike beneath

This ageing mask of time

That grasps to call itself belief

So down here in the Valley of the Shadow of Death

To the best denomination I have taken her soul

To show just what faith-tested means

Never seen the sun

Never been undone

Never thought her feeble screams

Would court such fascination

Never in a thousand years

I am the lord of the bored underworld

Her hand is pleasured in mine

Together we will climb

Past the pearly castellations

A wealth of treasures to find

We'll fly crows of ill-omen

Across a leaden sky

To red squares of Holy Roman

Catholicism in an eye

To deeply sow, where sorrow rose

Having all tomorrows

For our wedded union to impose

The world in misery succumbs to frost

Without her here I'm lost

The seasons absorb the cost

Together our paths are crossed

Eros and Thanatos

One by one

Love's raised horns sound their sweet surrender

And one by one

Her defences fall, debris

My will be done

I shall storm the gates where fates defend her

And once I've won

Her heart will belong to me

I saw her there

Gathering despair

By the light of the moon

On the Vale of Nysa

I walked the endless night

Before she pressed from me

The swallowed seed of winter's bite

Undressed Persephone

So down here in the shadow of the Valley of kings

Let this sticky situation spur on fertility

Come be my perennial Queen

Never seen the sun

Never been undone

Never thought her velvet ports

Would wean such masturbation

Never in a thousand years

Without her here I'm lost

The season absorb the cost

Together our paths are crossed

Eros and Thanatos

One by one

Love's raised horns sound their sweet surrender

And one by one

Her defences fall debris

My will be done

I shall storm the gates where fates defend her

And once I've won

Her heart will belong to me

Hades

I've slept delightfully within these open arms

Plucked, I'm a magnet to your charm

Lost in a skeletal dance

I rent the meadow's earth

To embed her as my bride

This wond'rous light of life

That rights the wrongs I've bred inside

Her mouth no longer plaintive

Those lips no longer dry

We waltz the great halls naked

Candelit and oft obliged

To deeply sow where sorrow froze

Having all tomorrows

To bathe in the savored afterglow

To slave at the favoured crafts we know

The Night At Catafalque Manor lyrics - Cradle of Filth

Lighting forked like a bifurcate tongue

Flickers on this wicked little pandemonium

Theatrical, the courted orchestra ripples

The tumult of the skies is alive and highly verbal

It plays for mass destruction

Frightening the sight of darksome banners on the wind

Tumulus the cumulus, its drub of us begins

A glavanting army of tsunami-like decrees

Trees are edging backwards I am lost to reverie

I wait, contemplating the fate to undress

Tonight is the night for the hands of doom to caress

This eve is enwreathed with sensation

My carriage appears like a fright through the storm

A bell from a distant church, tolling forlorn

Thrash out a tortuous path until dawn

Oh, the viciousness of this parade

The heavens have lit so exquisite a stage

I sense the stars up in arms

Their mercurial charms

Incensed by the liveried curtain

And hence my journey, pockmarked

By the Stygian dark

Is intense and delivered uncertain

This eve is in league with elation

As a gatehouse awaits in a shadowy lee

The foul tempest howls and then suddenly

Falls as silent as skulls set in lost ossuaries

Passed under the shrouded arches

The moon spills twixt clouded branches

And where it sits, the driveway blanches

Fixed aslant the hill

To the foot of the Catafalque Manor

Silvered thus, it extends a glamour

Like Cinderella bared to dare enamor

My inner Gothic, thrilled

Exotic guests, coalesced embark

(Espied through windows on the park)

To arrest my villainous heart

For it is amiss, yet yearning still...

I pervade the ball

And glide amidst rich animals

So beautiful their prideful litters

Underneath chandeliers that glitter

Sanguine delights

In bright Victoriana

A Nirvana life bedights

In light of this I commend the

Host for his regalities

A toast I thus engender

But now in a forest of glasses raised

And gazes held

I spy a face whose spell

One would race through blazing hell for

I must confess

I came here for the game

For the scent of death

But never did I foresee heaven torn asunder

By a seraph who would steal its thunder

My ardour awakened is taken by force

I ask for a dance, a chance for discourse

She bats me a glance and love strikes like a scorpion...

We play for mass corruption

She waits, contemplating her fate to address

Tonight is the night for the hands of doom to caress

This Eve is besieged by temptations

The flames in her eyes catch these mad butterflies

They burst into blossoms well-versed to imply

This girl, non pareil, is a nymph in disguise

Oh, the viciousness of this parade

The heavens have lit so exquisite a stage

We pass through the throng

Heedless and headlong

Possessed by the gathering maelstrom

By her talents impressed

And the swell of her breast

Obsessed, I am halfway to Hell gone

This Eve is enwreathed in sensation

As the tempest renews in the turbulent heights

We fake our excuses, soon to take flight

Forever to wake and remember this night

The night at Catafalque Manor

Alison Hell lyrics - Cradle of Filth

(originally by Annihilator)

Alice, isn't it frightening?

Alice, aren't you scared?

Alice, isn't it wonderful?

Living life afraid

Don't look around the corner

I might be lurking there

Under the bed at night

You're up 'til dawn again

Alison hell, your mind begins to fold

Alison hell, aren't you growing cold?

Alison hell, you are looking blue

Alice in hell, what else can you do?

Alice

I begin my rule, life hideous in your mind

Crying out, you've lost your doll

It isn't worth a dime

Alison hell, your mind begins to fold

Alison hell, aren't you growing cold?

Alison hell, what are you looking for?

Alice in hell, soon I close the door

Sitting in the corner, you are naked and alone

No one listened to your fears, you've created me

Alice, isn't it frightening?

Alice, aren't you scared?

I was killed at birth

I shoot this final scene

You're in the basement

You're trapped insanity

Alison hell, what were you looking for?

Alison hell, as I close the door

Alison hell, here you shall dwell

Alison hell, Alice dwells in hell

Alice

Alice

Alison

Alice

In hell

Goodbye

Demon Prince Regent lyrics - Cradle of Filth

Light the torch, cite debauch

Excite the tortured heart

The forest whispers

Graves undulate and part

Let's get this ritual started

Under dark aligning stars

Devouring fruits of fallen man

Grown delicious in their degradation

Blackened towers root a poisoned land

Consumption reeking

Corruption seeking deep gestation

Demon Prince

I see the pride that swallows

Even since

The tide disaster follows

Turned to the calling of your fall from Heaven

Endeavours burnt

Cast down to earth

You never learnt

Lasting grace in any worth

Still yielding not in this vocation

Wake the night, its delight

Forsakes the rites of dawn

The fire beckons

An inferno poised to swarm

This might be the pit God shits in

But it hides a biding storm

Best to reign in Hell than serve a slave

To lofty indecisions taken

On one's behalf hunger nerve the brave

To seek exemption

To see freewill awaken

Demon Prince

I see the pride that swallows

Even since

The tide disaster follows

Turned to the calling of your fall from Heaven

Endeavours burnt

Cast down to earth

You never learnt

Lasting grace in any worth

Still yielding not in this vocation

Undivine, why climb to the skies

To repent fell maledictions?

Hypocrites who duly sit on high

Extend your extradition

Extend your opposition

With rancour sunken, anchored

Beneath the clouds that roll in anger

The bitter truth is Hell

Is truly not

The Hell they think they know

Demon Prince

I see the pride that swallows

Even since

The tide disaster follows

Turned to the calling of your fall from Heaven

Endeavours burnt

Cast down to earth

You never learnt

Lasting grace in any worth

Still fielding dreams to scattered nations

She Is A Fire lyrics - Cradle of Filth

She will wring from you

All the secrets you keep locked

Away in sadness

And she will play

Where dark pathways of the mind

Stumble blindly into madness

Her eyes are filled with the weight of mountains

Desire spurting from her sacred fountains

Red hot is her inclination

I beg incineration

She came walking from the flame

Burning with dark inspiration

She is a fire

She is a fire

As far as Venus goes

She twists the bind

Between the marble and the sculptor

Slight of waist, sleight of mind

Fates refined

Spells to shelter her from vultures

A furnace heat of needs surmounting

She melts my beaten heartbeat down and counting

Red hot is her inclination

I beg incineration

She came dancing from the flame

Burning with dark inspiration

She is a fire

Weaponised (Galvanised)

Even in mortal guise

Death would tremble just to take her

Like a calm sea 'neath which the Kraken

Unfurls its deafening limbs

She, she's a smouldering psalm

Poised to make good on ignitable sins

Poised to make good on her delightful sins

Red hot is her inclination

I beg incineration

She came walking from the flame

Burning with dark inspiration

She is a fire

Red hot is her inclination

I beg incineration

She came dancing from the flame

Burning with dark inspiration

She is a fire

(She is a fire)

"Hammer Of The Witches" (2015)

Yours Immortally… lyrics - Cradle of Filth

Bedight, this pre-aestival
Festival drew darkly near
And our delight at its festival
Was a roar to rival loosed Fenrir

Let the Hellish celebrations begin
Ragnarok is rolling, magma abrim
The blackest mass the Brocken has ever seen
Invoking Loki, smoking the red weed

We listen to the Glorification
Of Chernobog in a fog of elation
Denial is the vilest form of blasphemy

Standing on the cliffs that kiss burning winds
We are risen together
Brazen, exalting, a hiss of triumph rings
I am yours
...Yours immortally

Tonight the rites are right for raising spirits on
The Devil's Pulpit, The Witches Altar
The dead will dance macabre
To Chaos Magic psalters

A heavy thunder shadowing lightning
Forged for Judgement Day
Announces greater wonder, citing
Heralds on the starry way

And I held you like St Vitus
As the Sabbat Incept to play
Before the fever swelled to bite us
And we were swept to waylay
May Day

Standing on the cliffs that kiss burning winds
We are rising together
Brazen, exalting, a hiss of triumph rings
I am yours
...Yours immortally

Only those tortured
Could profess such festive scenes
And melodies
Of raucous wrought debauchery

No arthritic, sullen Goya
For this fresh Walpurgis Eve
Our flesh it breathes
Full of fantastic symphnoies

Witness the fires reflected in infernal eyes
That blaze, alive
Eternal ties
Have trussed amazing lusts together

Procession, banquet, black mass, orgy

If our world were to cease right now
In the midst of this
Wide naked bliss, these started scared vows
I would break the universe in two
Just to side with you
To face the jealous heavens down

Excite the terse miscarriage
Of first light that thirsts to slay
This night versed with the marriage
Of you and I
And all who dare to stray