The Sanies of the Centuries – Ode to Degeneration

(Unless otherwise indicated, lyrics were translated by M. D. L. & L’Atrabilaire, courtesy of La mesnie Herlequin).

Go here for translations of the other Peste Noire albums.

Nous sommes fanés [We are withered]

Instrumental

Le mort joyeux [The joyful dead]

(by Charles Baudelaire, taken from The Flowers of Evil (1857))

In a rich, heavy soil, infested with snails,
I wish to dig my own grave, wide and deep,
Where I can at leisure stretch out my old bones
And sleep in oblivion like a shark in the wave.

I have a hatred for testaments and for tombs;
Rather than implore a tear of the world,
I’d sooner, while alive, invite the crows
To drain the blood from my filthy carcass.

O worms! black companions with neither eyes nor ears,
See a dead man, joyous and free, approaching you;
Wanton philosophers, children of putrescence,

Go through my ruin then, without remorse,
And tell me if there still remains any torture
For this old soulless body, dead among the dead!

Translated by William Aggeler.

Laus tibi domine [Praise to Thee, O Lord!]

FIRST PSALM

The Devil be with you
And with your spirit!
Glory be to the Father, praise to Thee
King of eternal glory.
Sathanas, I will give praise to Thee
with my whole heart,
In the cruellest assemblies
And congregations.

IMPRECATION

Christ, Darkness arises…
Thy kingdom rot!
The generation of the righteous
Shall perish.

OTHER PSALM

Lord of garbage,
Worm god,
Almighty Father
We praise Thee!
Heaven and earth are full
Of your glory…

Praise the Lord, ye children!!!

Famis canticum, 2005.

Spleen

(by Charles Baudelaire, taken from The Flowers of Evil (1857))

When the low, heavy sky weighs like a lid
On the groaning spirit, victim of long ennui,
And from the all-encircling horizon
Spreads over us a day gloomier than the night;

When the earth is changed into a humid dungeon,
In which Hope like a bat
Goes beating the walls with her timid wings
And knocking her head against the rotten ceiling;

When the rain stretching out its endless train
Imitates the bars of a vast prison
And a silent horde of loathsome spiders
Comes to spin their webs in the depths of our brains,

All at once the bells leap with rage
And hurl a frightful roar at heaven,
Even as wandering spirits with no country
Burst into a stubborn, whimpering cry.

— And without drums or music, long hearses
Pass by slowly in my soul; Hope, vanquished,
Weeps, and atrocious, despotic Anguish
On my bowed skull plants her black flag.

Translated by William Aggeler.

Phalènes et pestilence – salvatrice averse [Moths and pestilence – redemptive storm]

‘There is no sin that does not service our redemption… Praise to our sins that have earned us this’ CLAUDEL.

“As the eyes of servants are on the hands of their master, so are our eyes unto the Lord our God until He have mercy on us.” [1]

I. Fire

Lightning weeps its gold in sharp thunder’s roar!
Over my night usurped by entranced suns.
A cataclysm falls, inflaming the arborescence
Of my body flooded with electrical tapeworms…
Scream frantic muses, inspire me
With the flaming cataracts of transcendence!

II. Canticle

‘There, pour
Your burning rain of moths
Sowing gemstones of carnage
On the reddened lands bathed in acrid incense.

Deleterious Night, weep
Hot showers of incarnated cinders,
Bloody the ether
With feverish insect swarms!

Deafly, go wither
The tainted chaff, ferment of inanity,
With your elixir, irrigate
The toxic womb of humanity.’

END

Overripe flora of bodies.
Cesspool of putrefying flesh.
Pendulous womb where there sleeps
A swirling sediment of wounds…

One must drown the plague
With the plague, so that an atoning acid
Issuing forth from the heavens infests
Our cities that stand as cuspidors.

Priest during a celebration : “Faith does not live solely on an individual basis. She also lives together with others, in church. A faith that is not shared with others will wither. We all need to find ourselves together to confess our faith in a church.” [2]

La sale Famine de Valfunde, May 2003.

[1] Latin intro spoken by Famine in the 2005 demo version of “Phalènes et Pestilence”, taken from the Psalm 122:2 from the Introit of the ‘Monday of the First Week in Lent’ Mass.
[2] This sample appears only on the 2005 demo version.

Retour de flamme (Hooligan Black Metal) [Backlash (Hooligan Black Metal)]

‘For mortal men there is but one hell, and that is the folly and wickedness and spite of his fellows.’ SADE

Rapt-Rape-Rapture! Rapt-Rape-Rapture of the soul!
Rapt of the heart from the body Rape
Rapt rapture of life rapture of death
Little brain in scattered splinters!

Rapt

Put the unworthy Father’s eyes of glass out!
Without any other choice fall in love
With the only One who beckons us here.
Runtish disowned foetus…
Of the Adversary’s dismembered flower,
With the gift of life: wipe your arse.
Then stifle their chuckles
With the toilet paper!
It’s your turn to sully.
The inexistence of Sense, you substitute it with
A fanaticism of the senses that debase
The pageantry of the Logos.
The frigid universe in its vast cesspit
Will incubate you in him as its negation,
The black mirror, the homicidal conscience
Of all that is.

Bardic adept of all that hates,
Flayed flaying, canker of God.

Give back immediately
That which they have given to you!
Hungrily retake
That which they stole from you!

Between losing and being lost,
Opt for losing yourself through the destruction of others.

La sale Famine de Valfunde, May 2003.

Dueil angoisseus [Anguished grief]

(by Christine de Pisan (1362 – 1431), a pioneering DSBM lyricist (I advise anyone to take a look at the whole poem, as this is only an excerpt of it.))

Anguished grief, rage beyond measure;
Grieving despair, full of madness;
Endless languishing and a life of misfortune
Full of tears, anguish and torment;
Doleful heart living in darkness,
Ghostly body at the brink of death
I have ceaselessly, continually;
And so, I can neither be healed nor die.

OUTRO (A priest during a celebration…): ‘In the world, many men and women, many children both deaf and impaired are cut off from all communication, strangers amongst their brethren, wounded by those they love. May the Lord accompany them so that their hands and their eyes become a sign of reconciliation.’

Des Médecins Malades et des Saints Séquestrés [Sick Doctors and Captive Saints]

‘Hell is not a question of horror. Hell is to be debased until death, whether death comes for you or passes you by. The dreadful abasement of the victim, the mysterious abjection of the executioner. Satan is Degradation.’ MALRAUX

The wintry industry belches smoke and screams,
The slaughter lines form, after the careful selection,
Of meats deported for incineration.
Psychosis of the virus: savage Inquisition.

Strange doctors have set up hospitals
Throughout Europe to fumigate its scourge
(Fanciful bacteria of a neurotic tribune
Infecting the minds of the enraptured masses).

Baying, pogroms, razzias! Deafening chaos!
The serfs of the high Gestapo yell out:
The dandies of Satan with heavy steel helmets
Cram eternal tourists into the trains.

Solemn stamp of boots, of drums,
Under a sky eclipsed by the crematorium furnaces’ magma
Foul-mouthed striges,
Spewing out lives turned into ashes into the paddock of hatred;

Satanic opera where blond troubadours
Chant in unison ‘I will await your return!’
Strolling around carcasses torn apart by dogs
Officers spunking into the bottoms of urinals!

The wintry industry belches smoke and screams
The slaughter lines form, after the careful selection,
Of meats deported for incineration.
Here the sick have taken the lead.

La sale Famine de Valfunde, May 2003.

EXTRA:

The following song was featured on Les démos, the collection box set from 2012.

L’hymne en l’honneur de la peste [Hymn in Honour of the Plague]

(by Aleksandr Pushkin taken from A Feast in Time of Plague; 1900)

When great and mighty winter stirs
And, like a chieftain wrapped in furs,
Upon us sends its shaggy soldiers
Of biting frost and stinging snow
It’s met with fire’s crackling smolder,
And wintry warmth of feasts aglow.

Her Terrible Majesty, the Plague
Herself does now offensive take,
Rich harvest reaps herself to flatter;
Upon our windows day and night
Her graveyard shovel knocks and clatters…
What can be done? How can we fight?

As from the Winter pest we hide
We’ll also lock the Plague outside!
We’ll fires light, we’ll fill our chalice,
And merrily our minds we’ll drown
And, brewing feasts and balls for solace,
We’ll glorify the Plague’s new crown.

There’s rapture in a battle, bliss
Upon the brink of the abyss,
And in the raging ocean’s fury,
Midst angry waves and darkness vague,
And in the desert whirlwind’s hurry,
And in the breeze that brings the Plague.

All, all that threatens us with death,
Hides for the mortal in its depth
An inexplicable enchantment;
A promise of eternal life!
He’s lucky who in dire moments
Has tasted of these sweet delights.

We sing your praise, long live the Plague!
We do not fear the darkest grave,
We will not shy from your endeavor!
We’ll drink the maiden’s rosy breath
And clang our foaming cups together;
And both are filled, perhaps… with death.

Translated by M.E. Yankelevich