Agalloch The Serpent & the Sphere 1. Birth And Death Of The Pillars Of Creation Towers... Deity forged architecture Swirling in and out of form Enveloped in the arms of dark matter Towers...mercurial and flowing... My work is done Pillars... From an antediluvian bane Collapsing in and out of form Embodied in a cradle of absence Pillars...mercurial and flowing... My work is done By way of light acros s a vast millennia I can behold this grandeur at its infancy Though I know it has already passed away a millennia before My work has begun... 2. (Serpens Caput) [Instrumental] 3. The Astral Dialogue The firmament above the horizon of history Heathen fires burn the ancestral night Esoteric figures move across the Arcane plateau with their Symbols engraved in the sky The astral plane and the lineage of the past Reborn! An abstract interwoven archive Languages of the gods, spoken in sidereal tongue Divinities of the stars Illuminate in runes of man At the creation's hollow, a sudden white light gleams Like a wayward sentient spirit in the mire Of space and time Gods sire and propagate here Under divine law of the opus magnum Evolution of a language to come 4. Dark Matter Gods Cast away in solitude between the divide of dimensions Frozen in timeless aura, a catalyst of colors The abyss... I was born in the fibers of oblivion; the saturnine keeper of mystery and malevolent patriarch of chaos ...they fade into the shadows I cast... (evermore in sorrow) Darkness! Chaos! A malediction! An abomination!! ...they fade into the silence I keep... Dark Matter Gods The abyss is the elder of time Dark Matter Gods The void is the archetype of being For each step; nihility, a paradox, an epoch, a quantum crevasse... Worlds are lost in my path ...t hey fade into footsteps I leave... Dark Matter Gods The dark mass is the father of all 5. Celestial Effigy "Teach me your mood, O patient stars! Who climb each night the ancient sky, Leaving on space no shade, no scars, No trace of age, no fear to die." [- Emerson] "My allegiance is with the inner self The dark celestial voice of wisdom Beyond the dust that is this world." There is a voice adrift in the starless and marble black dark space A voice of wisdom and purity Beyond the vestiges of sanity There is a voice deep in the darkest places calling...haunting me... Where no light bears a shadow Where no time escapes unhallowed I am compelled to dissolve into the eternal unknown eidolon A voice that leads to a world beyond a mere mortal's most profound dreams Yet I know... There is no turning back from here There is no place for the undeserved Gone are the relics! "Teach me your ways Of hatred, unlight, and death I offer myself to your wisdom My allegiance is with the elite!" There is a voice adrift in the darkness calling...calling me... A whisper of wisdom and purity Beyond the vestiges of sanity There is a voice deep in the starless and marble black dark space Where no light draws a shadow Where no time escapes unhallowed "An effigy; a gift from another kind" In the glow of a distant aurora light No dreams shall take form Gifts dwell in the depths of things unspoken this night... 6. Cor Serpentis (The Sphere) [Instrumental] 7. Vales Beyond Dimension I have arrived at the corridor of infinity; the great hall where the ages are kept Behind ancient ash and primordial iron The past is a mirror...aeons exist in a myriad cast The vale before me; my own reflection Another stands at the doorway of the maelstrom; a visionary to guide me through Cracks reveal themselves in patterns of the distance The past is a sphere A mystic shape, a mode of knowing A godless, perfect form in the quietus of passing Between the vales of existence and the miasmic landscape of consciousness The fabric of being has withered away; no longer there waiting for me I have peeled away layers of my humanity No longer a being, the core of entity For each layer reveals the key to the gates of the multiverse Through the doorway of a shaman's reality A universe within the skull Alas I stand at the threshold of dimension The macrocosm has revealed itself as a towering serpent spire The past has shattered...aeons subsist only in countless shards The myriad cast of the vale; a thousandfold reflection 8. Plateau Of The Ages [Instrumental] 9. (Serpens Cauda) [Instrumental]