MISERY INDEX LYRICS

1. Universal Untruths

[Music: Morris, Jarvis, and Kloppel, lyrics: Netherton]

This is a code red
This is the crown of ire
As we decline
Into the void of inveracity

Where no one is to blame
And nothing's ever real
And death is what unites us... in fear

As time dissolves
Inside a blur of fragments
And we decline
Into the black of unreality

A fundamental flaw
A system overload
Of means without ends
We reap what we deserve

2. Decline And Fall

[Music: Morris, Jarvis, and Kloppel, lyrics: Netherton]

Captivate, prevaricate, the worst is yet to come
Just zero-sum directives, from silver, forked tongues
A monumental fall, I stop, stare and contemplate how it ends...

Crushed in between, underneath the wheel
Do I have a future, in this desert of the real?
Slow atrophy, schizophrenic dreams
Do I need a conscience, in this nihilist regime?

Sowing, seeds of distress, left, right, through the center
Reveal the hidden hand, as it propagates vicious and false incentive

Decline and Fall—The spear of Osiris
Decline and Fall—The kiss of oblivion
Decline and Fall—The cult of deception
Decline... and Fall

No ties that bind, except the will to live
Do I have a reason, something more than hate to give?
Apex achiever, or food for the worms?
Will I even care, once this world begins to burn?

Sowing, seeds of distress, left, right, through the center
Reveal the hidden hand, as it propagates vicious and false incentive

Decline and Fall—The spear of Osiris
Decline and Fall—The kiss of oblivion
Decline and Fall—The cult of deception
Decline... and Fall

In this, dead institution, nowhere to go but down
Another day in the status quo, another drop in the well of wasted hopes
Orphans, in narcosis, longing for a past that never was
You're all dead to me, as lifeless as a corpse ground to dust
Insects, entombed, the woe of time and doom
I spit and curse each day I walk this blighted earth

3. The Choir Invisible

[Music: Kloppel and Jarvis, lyrics: Netherton]

We are, the ones you fear, breakers of your grand illusion
Exiled, dispossessed, your sown-seeds reaped and left abandoned

God forsaken, left adrift, detritus ripped and torn asunder
Shunned like, rodent hordes, human lives that wane and wander
You said, "never again"…
Does that keep your conscience clean?

We are disposable, the choir invisible
The last in line to join, the choir invisible

We flee, blight and filth, so far beyond your gates and walls
Nameless, namenlos, unknown, innominado – naught!

Exiled, souls detested, so riven with abject despair
Blank stares, open mouths, our stifled screams you'll never hear
Toss, the coin, we wait our turn, until the boatman calls

We are disposable, the choir invisible
The last in line to join, the choir invisible
…down to the afterworld

Sinking, we slip into the black, of our briny grave
We die (just another tick on your news feed)
Wailing, such a mournful sound, underneath the waves
Dragged… into the deep

We are disposable, the choir invisible
The last in line to join, the choir invisible
…down to the afterworld

4. New Salem

[Music: Kloppel and Jarvis, lyrics: Kloppel]

Sharpen up the guillotine, as fashionistas clean the scene
You're socially bewitched with narrative affixed
Tried and executed with no due process

Do you fight the good fight? Or instigate the fighting?
It's a fucking witch-hunt, somebody's head's gotta roll…
In New Salem

Burn the books, rename the streets, nothing is safe, suppress the speech
A virtual conflict, binary logic, who the fuck is the strawman now?

Do you fight the good fight? Or instigate the fighting?
It's a fucking witch-hunt, co-opted activists divide and conquer us
Somebody's head's gotta roll

New Salem, somebody's head's gotta roll, New Salem
Co-opted activists divide and conquer us
Somebody's head's gotta roll

In a pacified endemic state, it's another echo-chamber slave
Addicted to extremes of ideologies
Where left and right amalgamate and hang us from their tallest trees

Do you fight the good fight? Or instigate the fighting?
It's a fucking witch-hunt, somebody's head's gotta roll

In an echo chamber no one can hear you scream
Burning the strawman in this knee-jerk nightmare,
Roiling in all your virtue valor, awakening as a victim martyr,
Freedom fighter, or bold-faced instigator?

Do you fight the good fight? Or instigate the fighting?
It's a fucking witch-hunt, somebody's head's gotta roll

New Salem, somebody's head's gotta roll, New Salem
Co-opted activists divide and conquer us
Somebody's head's gotta roll

5. Hammering The Nails

[Music: Netherton and Jarvis, lyrics: Netherton]

Calls of distress echo through the maze
Whose name on the list is next?
This caustic derision, the abject dearth
As we collapse in this open-ended cage

Now is all we have,
Yet blind we dance into the void
As we follow the one who leads from the rear
Hail to the chief: megalomaniac!

And we're hammering the nails down
As we each die clinging to the lies that hold our world in place

One by one, we reach the precipice
As progeny of vice and avarice
Bleak is the vision, the cult end-time
These are the days of the faithless god

And we're hammering the nails down
As we each die clinging to the lies that hold our world in place

Rivals—not equals, all against all
Compassion rendered null and void

Breach and division, moral charades
Absurd inquisitions, sanity fades
We fake dissent, we breed deceit
Each fuels the other endlessly

And we're hammering the nails down
As we each die clinging to the lies that hold our world in place
And we're hammering the nails down
As we each die clinging... to our lies

6. Rituals Of Power

[Music: Kloppel and Jarvis, lyrics: Netherton]

Smell the fear, the coming decay of all, rites of spring gone rotten
High priests, lords of artifice, lead their flocks into harm's way

Welcome all to the new inquisition, the last shriek from the tomb
Nothing left but to burn it all down, rub the salt in the open wound
Destroy, delete, rebuild, repeat, another name carved into stone
Falsify, then pretend, as we cut the cord and wait for the end

With a concrete stare – rituals of power
The dead eyes of the past – rituals of power
Up to the gates of Armageddon – rituals of power
Until we're all one with the dust – rituals of power

Still they cling to the old superstitions, the elders, they speak in tongues
They spit words, their words as they wither and wait, as Cronus eats the young
Destroy, delete, rebuild, repeat – another name carved into stone
As they rot away, 200 years – straight to the grave

With a concrete stare – rituals of power
The dead eyes of the past – rituals of power
Up to the gates of Armageddon – rituals of power
Until we're all one with the dust – rituals of power

No one cares who lives or dies, no empathy, no compromise
The crows descend, the children mourn, the ichor spills and the crosses burn
Like Visigoths at the gates of Rome, a great decline into a great unknown
Marble eyes, obelisks, cenotaphs, Bolsheviks
Cities burn and ashes rain, no one speaks of us again
Each and all, swept away…like grains of sand on the shore of time

Greed shrines, halls of emptiness, blight and shame rewarded
Cowardice with no consequence, thieves-as-gods exalted
Parasites, endless appetites, drag them to oblivion
Subjects fill the empty nest, mouths open… waiting for worms

7. They Always Come Back

[Music: Netherton and Jarvis, lyrics: Netherton]

These bastards never die
They just slip and crawl through the fallout filth
Not one will deny
The hairless apes achieved what their god designed

As they wake from seventeen years entombed, dawn of the Necrocene arrived
Spawn of nuclear waste, unearthed from ashes they arise.
Offal of earth expelled, cast right out from her festering wounds
Arc of time beset, this cadaveric discretion

Rise, above, the archetype of man, a septic race is born
Bleed and purge, a lesson never learned, like black, hissing roaches...

They always, come back
They always, come back... again

Carved out from ice
Parasites of neo-neolithic age
Dregs of pestilence
Children of the aftermath

Rise, above, the archetype of man, a septic race is born
Bleed and purge, a lesson never learned, like black, hissing roaches...

They always, come back
They always, come back

Cryptic lifeforms and crumbling icons
Ancestors, infected, they spread like viral fire
Embalming, dissolving, the meek inherit nothing

Scumrot humans, storming over, arctic deserts,
A brave, new, world to conquer
And spread their seeds in virgin waste... end all

Spiral out, their dead-end lives, as carrion calls echo on
Acid fields, rivers of tar, endlessly... they always come back

8. I Disavow

[Music: Kloppel and Jarvis, lyrics: Netherton]

Sycophants storm the gate
In vermin-hordes they swarm
Contorted faces gripping torches in the afterglow
First they castigate, then they obfuscate
Truth is the void where reality will end

The foulest walk among us
Janus-faced and starry-eyed
March to the piper's tune
Like rats they'll follow – you just need a song to lead them

Servants fawning, I disavow
This vile calling – I disavow

Who fears the anarchist? Who fears the terrorist?
Truth is the void where reality will end

Fictionaries fabricate
And fascinate the minds of youth
Posturing partisans
Who fuel this nightmare with their solipsistic bullshit

Servants fawning, I disavow
This vile calling – I disavow

Swastikinder, casualties of reason—your god's a man of straw

Ventriloquists, veritas in absentia
Archetypes of a species yet to come
The die is cast—no questions ever answered
A downward spiral into vertigo's arms

Who fears the anarchist? Who fears the terrorist?
Truth is the void where reality will end

A dialectic death-waltz
Called 'cards against reality'
A game we each play alone
As gas-lit martyrs for the overlords that feed us

Servants fawning, I disavow
This vile calling – I disavow and repudiate in full

These jackals spit the venom of deception

Sleep walk, no rest for the ignorant
Who cry wolf as they're dragged from the womb
Dry-dox, the pitchfork procession trolls on… and you are next

9. Naysayer

[Music: Kloppel and Jarvis, lyrics: Netherton and Kloppel]

Naysaying scum, betrayer of truth
You will never know, "the truth" of your... deceit
A scarecrow, that burns itself down
Naysaying scum, you interloping infiltrators

Vice and virtue, the same for a Naysayer
The Scorning Naysayer, the Swarming Naysayers
Quick to judge and run, a sadist on the prowl

The Icon grotesque, an eater of the dead
You feast on hope and world-weary flesh
On castaways, on masses dispossessed
You Naysaying beast, your vanity, an amulet of death

Vice and virtue, the same for a Naysayer
The Scorning Naysayer, the Swarming Naysayers
Quick to judge and run, a sadist on the prowl

A petulant child inept, and mired in punishment
You are the one that history will soon forget
Naysayer namenlos, like vermin swept from city streets
Agent provocateur
As you speak under the sands of time,
Your spew and spite and spit all reeks of servitude

Vice and virtue, the same for a Naysayer
The Scorning Naysayer, the Swarming Naysayers
Quick to judge and run, a sadist on the prowl







MISERY INDEX LYRICS