Irreligious
(Moonspell - 1996)







1. Perverse...Almost Religious
2. Opium
3. Awake!
4. For A Taste Of Eternity
5. Ruin And Misery
6. A Poisoned Gift
7. Subversion
8. Raven Claws
9. Mephisto
10. Herr Spiegelman
11. Full Moon Madness






1. Perverse...Almost Religious







2. Opium

[The short Portuguese piece at the end of the song is actually a quote from one of the most famous and at the same enigmatic poets of Portuguese literature, Fernando Pessoa, whose works are abundantly translated into several languages from Czech to English itself. Anyway to make a long story short one of the most interesting aspects of this poet was that we used diffirent personalities each one creating a peculiar kind of writing and a very particular universe of interpretation and artistic creation. I have chosen my favorite split on Pessoa's on the "person" of his heteronyms Alvaro de Campos who was more directed into a kind of urban, grey, depressive poetry. As I wanted to write a song about the creative power of the drug named opium, so evident in a lot of literature that is within my range of interest, I have collected inspiration from a particular poem named "Opicrio" that narrates a boat trip to the Orient in a very, very strange perspective indeed. So the actual thing translated might sound like this (I remark once again all the loss of power that translation carries with it):]

["Therefore I take opium. It is a medicine.]
[I am a convalescent of the Moment.]
[I live in the groundfloor of Thought]
[and seeing life goes by grows me tedious."]

Opium, desire or will?
Inspiration bound from an elegant seed
Subversion, through smoke I foresee
Erotic motions of lesser gods in ectasy

Opium, bring me forth another dream
Spawn worlds of flesh and red,
little jewels of atrocity
Opium, I sleep in debauchery
And burn with you
when you burn in Me

Opium, we fantasize
as we fuse with your root
You are a strange flower,
we are your strangest fruit

Opium, it burns in me and you
Opium, it burns for me and for you

"Por isso eu tomo opio, é um remédio.
Sou um convalescente do momento.
Moro no rés do chão do pensamento
E ver passar a vida faz-me tédio"

[Fernando Pessoa/Alvaro Campos: Opi…rio]






3. Awake!

Awake... for all is dying, even the dead

We are our Past failing to come back

All of us visionaires
with a rope around our neck






4. For A Taste Of Eternity

Your honey on coil burns,
As tears drop from your grand dead womb

Undesired, I fell into your being
Releasing shapes inside of you
Only seen in your wildest dreams
I am the impossibility
of your long-kept chastily
I am your offence and you can't wait
To have me inside of you and taste...

Eternity

Revolving around me,
in desire, you burn
As blood drops
from your new-awakened womb

Undesired, and thrown away from your belief
I am the one whom you
were taught to renounce
In your virginal fear
The sweat, the hands, the sleepless nights
And the violence of the silent sighs
All of them gather in me
Take my hand and taste eternity
Take my hand and find a new god






5. Ruin And Misery

In each of your failures
I saw my victory
And each time you fall
A knife tattoos a smile
On my lips
You are now empty of life
And we are drunk with death

Raw models
Ruin & Misery

I can offer you a hand
To help you hold the dagger
A perfect jewel for
Our perfect end

And as we lay, we kissed
Fingers wet with poison
Thinking to each one
There is beauty in death

Raw models
Ruin & Misery

Allow me to doubt
We were lovers who could really share
The only love between us
Was hate

Without hope we could not fear
And silently we disappeared
Hand in hand, we took our lives
And together stopped being
Raw models on a novel of Ruin & Misery






6. A Poisoned Gift

Forever young in a ground so cold
The splendor of your death still fresh to behold

In your neck an open wound
To spawn life into your Love
And to feed the creatures of our world

We have tasted from the poisoned gift of love
Which condemned us to forever fly alone

We have experienced an aged potion
The wine of life which stole us light
May we gather again and be as one
And to forever relish in the twin joys

As we taste from the poisoned gift of love

Forever young in a ground so cold
The splendour of your dance still there to behold

Our legend is a sin in tongues
To eternal sleep, to trance we belong
We are now but an empty glance
Palid is your state of grace

To eternal sleep we belong
Feeling the rapture of the world
Beneath the violence of this curse
From the poisoned gift of love

Once I asked you to fly
Tonight I recreate the vow:
Do not fail to love Me as I have failed to die
With you...






7. Subversion

Perverse: the religion of pain
In each detail a world,
I know you hide something...






8. Raven Claws

I remember her as a child

Raven...on and on with her raven claws
Carving...on and on with her raven claws

How she lusts when she remembers
The night of her first blow
She always wanted to know
How far could she really go

Inflamed, a dead-end room
Seduce to consume
Nightsilence...Vampire...Empire
Statues with open wounds

The flavour of poison and moon
Still maturing on her blood
She is not your occasional affair, no!
But eternal love, drop by drop...

Raven...on and on with her raven claws
Carving...on and on with her raven claws

How daylight hurts when moonlight bites
She juggles with her invisible knife
A black bird senses danger and flies
Gives peace to a tall figure in the dark

Little silhouette snakes find
a warm nest behind the door
And whip-tongues and skins
of sisters now gone.

Bodyprints cover the velvet floor
Which grows red and red
They know she will hunt and hurt tonight
And they crown her Queen of the Dead.

Raven...on and on with her raven claws
Raping...on and on with her raven claws

Will she weep for them or whip them once again?






9. Mephisto

As madmen, some hung head down
From a long dead tree
Some discuss, all at once
For no one to hear

Variations on emptiness
Great themes on vain glory

And as some go feral in strange performances
Dressing customs that are metaphors
Of your disease
Hungry eyes are looking for Me...Mephisto

Laughing, I feed you
With meaningless games, tricks and philosophies
Whose answers you would die for
In your hunger to believe

How it does amuse Me
And makes Me wonder
For how long that it was Mine
Because now it does really inflame Me

As if ignorance was my secret desire...Mephisto

I am an angel who dresses in red
Riding above you, etching fire rings
I have learned to fly
Don't you remember?
While you still have not come down
From your long-dead tree

I can teach you wonders if you give me your soul
Marvels and wild dreams can be yours
I can teach you how iron turns to gold
And how life can grow so old

But I am a demon who dresses in red
And I do not hope you will understand...Mephisto






10. Herr Spiegelman

Look Me in the eyes and drown...

"Everyone considered the man in the blue jacket
as the most beautiful human being they have ever seen:
nuns saw on him the Messiah in flesh;
Satan's adorers the lustrous Prince of Darkness;
philosophers the Supreme Being;
young females an enchanted prince;
Men an ideal reflection of themselves."

Patrick Sskind: The Perfume ("Story Of An Assassin")

Look Me in the eyes and drown...

I am your vulture, your immoral sculpture
Mirrorman, who understands
I am you, I know you
Your fantasy and reality
I wait for you to welcome you in my dreamworld
My water-eyes

Look Me in the eyes
Touch me in the eyes and dream...






11. Full Moon Madness

[The Narrated verses are nothing particularly worth of explaining in depth, they are just some of the many metaphors of Moonspell's lyrics so right to the point:]

[1st Portuguese verse:]
We are wolf memories
that tear the skin apart
Wolves that once were men
and shall be them again

[2nd Portuguese verse:]
We are wolf memories
that tear the skin apart
Wolves that once were men
and shall be them again
or perhaps memories of men
who insist of not tearing for to be wolves
but that never shall be them again...

Somos memórias de lobos que rasgam a pele
Lobos que foram homens
e o tornarão a ser

They awake for flesh
Choose pain as a path
Refuse a light
To blind you and me

Full Moon Madness,
We are as one and congregate
Full Moon Madness
We rise again to procreate

Somos memórias de lobos que rasgam a pele
Lobos que foram homens e o tornarão a ser
ou talvez memórias de homens.
que insistem em não rasgar a pele
Homens que procuram ser lobos
mas que jamais o tornarão a ser...

They awake for flesh
Choose pain as a path
Refuse a light
To blind you and me

Full Moon adness,
We are as one and congregate
Full Moon Madness
We rise again to procreate to seal our fate

Irreverence was cast out from the sky
And eternity lost its sex forever
And under the same heaven they voted to emptiness
They still celebrate under a Full Moon Madness...

They awake for flesh
Choose pain as a path
Refuse a light to blind you and me

Irreverence was cast out from the sky
And eternity lost its sex forever
And under the same heaven they voted to emptiness
We still celebrate under a Full Moon Madness...







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All lyrics provided for educational purposes only