In case you missed it, the full High Strange album is streaming now. Also the LP and Cassette are available and ship within four days. Listen or order over here on Bandcamp.
For those of you that didn’t buy the LP version, here are the full lyrics and credits. Enjoy. -Jonathan
A1 | Descend and You May See
Indra from above
Where are you daughter where?
(You’ve) lost your way my child
Beware or you shall sink
She followed from the heights
A ray of lightning down
Noble father Indra
What realms do I behold?
Behind you lies the second
The third is where you stand
The circle of The Earth
Mark the seventh house
Libra it is called
Day star in the hour
Fall gives equal weight
To night and the day
Indra named The Earth
Is that the ponderous world?
Dark, that from the moon
Must it take it’s light
Heavier of spheres
Of all that travel space
Downward set my glance
What is it that you see?
Beauty, forests green
And the waters blue
Peaks topped with white
Yellow fields below
(It) once had all the beauty
(As) all that Brahma made
Then fell a mishap
(The) orbit was disturbed
Rebellion led to crime
What race dwelleth there?
See them for yourself
(Their) speech no happy ring
Descend and you may see
Return and tell me all
Do their moans and wailings
Hold some reasoned ground?
A2 | Black Hands
I can tell you what is harder than all drudging and keeping awake nights
Harder to bear than draught and cold and dampness
It is to receive the confidences of all the unhappy people up there
They all come to me – Why?
Perhaps they read in the wrinkles of my face some runes that are engraved by suffering, and that invite confessions
In that shawl, lie hidden thirty years of my own and other people’s agonies
It is heavy, and it burns like nettles
Look at these walls
Does it not look as if the wall-paper itself had been soiled by every conceivable sin?
Look at these documents into which I write tales of wrong
Look at myself – No smiling man ever comes here
Nothing is to be seen here but angry glances, snarling lips, clenched fists
And everybody pours his anger, his envy, his suspicions, upon me
Look‚ my hands are black, and no washing will clean them
See how they are chapped and bleeding
I can never wear my clothes more than a few days because they smell of other people’s crimes
At times I have the place fumigated with sulphur, but it does not help
I sleep nearby, and I dream of nothing but crimes
Just now I have a murder case in court
I can stand that, but do you know what is worse than anything else?
That is to separate married people
Then it is as if something cried way down in the earth, and up there in the sky
As if it cried treason against the primal force
Against the source of all good
Against love
But the tortures, the sufferings‚ these I have to bear
See how I look
Do you think I could ever win a woman’s love with this countenance so like a criminal’s?
Do you think anybody dares to be friendly with me
Who has to collect all the debts
All the money obligations of the whole city?
It is a misery to be man
Men are to be pitied
A3 | Foulstrand
Oh Lord have mercy upon us
Save us for thy mercy’s sake
Lord deliver us from thy wrath
Have mercy upon us! Hear us!
Have pity upon the mortals
Out of the depths we call unto thee
Make not our burden too heavy
Have mercy upon us! Hear us!
Tears that men are weeping
What more do you hear?
Sighing, whining, wailing
Nothing to rejoice
Woe upon us all
Let us forestall hate
Life of common suffering
We are born in pain
This is no Fairhaven
This is Foulstrand
Bleak domain of sickness
We have lost our way
Life of constant torture
Affliction deep within
God’s tormented creatures
Why do we exist?
World of contradictions
Where we rot away
We have been forsaken
Left here to decay
Behold what has become of her
Children, drudgery, hunger
Beauty has perished, joy vanished
If you keep silent, they cry speak
When you speak, they shut you up
(By) smashing out all your teeth
I will tell there is no justice
They cheer as we rot in hell
Short lived is our joy
Forty days and nights
Rather drown than live here
Among these blackened hills
I cannot be content
When I see your pain
I am imprisoned here
Forty days and nights
Will that soothe your torment
Pity on us all
The everlasting one
Hear our mournful plea
Men are to be pitied
(I) could now wish to die
Seed of disaster
Devours peace like fire
The coming end destroys
Our joy from the start
Let us die together
End this evil life
This is no Fairhaven
This is Foulstrand
B1 | Evil is Life
Born beneath the clouds of heaven
Driven we were by the lightnings of Indra
Down to the sand-covered earth
Straw from the harvested fields soiled our feet
Dust from the high-roads
Smoke from the cities
Foul-smelling breaths
Fumes from cellars and kitchens
All we endured
Then to the open sea we fled
Filling our lungs with air
Shaking our wings
And laving our feet
Indra, Lord of the Heavens
Hear us
Hear our sighing
Unclean is the earth
Evil is life
Neither good nor bad
Can men be deemed
As they can, they live
One day at a time
Sons of dust
Through dust they journey
Born out of dust
To dust they return
Given they were, for trudging
Feet, not wings for flying
Dusty they grow
Lies the fault then with them
Or with Thee?
We, winds that wander
We, the air’s offspring
Bear with us men’s lament
Heard us you have
During gloom-filled Fall nights
In chimneys and pipes
In key-holes and door cracks
When the rain wept on the roof
Heard us you have
In the snowclad pine woods
Midst wintry gloom
Heard us you have
Crooning and moaning
In ropes and rigging
On the high-heaving sea
It was we, the winds
Offspring of the air
Who learned how to grieve
Within human breasts
Through which we passed
In sickrooms
On battlefields
But mostly where the newborn
Whimpered and wailed
At the pain of living
We, we, the winds
We are whining and whistling:
Woe! Woe! Woe!
We, we waves,
That are rocking the winds
To rest
Green cradles, we waves
Wet are we, and salty
Leap like flames of fire
Wet flames are we
Burning, extinguishing
Cleansing, replenishing
Bearing, engendering
We, we waves
That are rocking the winds
To rest
B2 | The Final Complaint / The Parting Hour
We are born in anguish
Torture mother’s heart
Life must you awaken
(To) light you must be born
With a cry of anger
(We) go into this life
Why are we like beasts then?
Not a race divine
Barely even human
Clothed in filth and blood
Journey of man begins
Over road of thorns
Forbid the beaten path
Every step brings pain
Sorrow gladdens no one
Only springs yet more
Thus you journey til you die
And your death brings others bread
Who walks upon the waters?
White light shines from him
It is the crucified
With him comes our doom
The sea is now rising
Darkness closing in
The storm is ever growing
Wrath of the dead Christ
Fear of the redeemer
Crying as they die
Winter sun now shines down
Shadows on the snow
Troop of soldiers marching
They have reached the cross
Shadows swallow sun’s fire
Darkness now descends
Your child cries for you
Pain is in my breast
(This) anguish, what is it?
It is called remorse
Each neglected duty
Pleasure innocent
Suffering inflicted
Upon fellow man
Your child suffers because it misses you‚ can you bear to know that a human being is suffering for your sake?
Now strife has entered my soul. It is rent in two, and the halves are being pulled in opposite directions.
Such, you know, are life’s little discords.
If you could only know how I have spread sorrow and ruin around me by the exercise of my calling‚ and note that I say calling, which carries with it the highest duty of all‚ then you would not even touch my hand.
I am cast off by God and persecuted by man;
I am deserted by the government, and scorned by my colleagues.
How am I to believe when nobody else believes?
How am I to defend a god that does not defend his own?
Do you know what it is?
A martyrology. A calendar with a martyr for each day of the year.
Yes, one that has been tortured and killed on account of his faith.
Tell me why?
Do you think that all who are tortured suffer, and that all who are killed feel pain?
Suffering is said to be salvation, and death a liberation.
The parting hour has come, the end draws near
And now farewell, thou dreaming child of man
Thou singer, who alone knows how to live
When from thy winged flight above the earth
At times thou sweepest downward to the dust
It is to touch it only, not to stay
And as I go—how, in the parting hour
As one must leave for e’er a friend, a place
The heart with longing swells for what one loves
And with regret for all wherein one failed
O, now the pangs of life in all their force
I feel: I know at last the lot of man
Regretfully one views what once was scorned
For sins one never sinned remorse is felt
To stay one craves, but equally to leave
As if to horses tied that pull apart
One’s heart is split in twain, one’s feelings rent
By indecision, contrast, and discord
Farewell
To all thy fellow-men make known
Where I go I shall forget them not
And in thy name their grievance shall be placed before the throne
Farewell
Credits:
All lyrics were adapted from August Strindberg’s “A Dream Play,” which was translated by Edwin Björkman.
“Black Hands” and “Evil is Life” are taken almost verbatim from the play. The other song lyrics I mutilated into place, and added to.
I am very sorry August. -JC
High Strange:
Conor Hickey – Guitar
Jonathan Canady – Vocals, Electronics
Joe Branciforte – Drums
Jay Newman – Bass, Moog, Apprehension Engine
Cover: “Monk Meditating near a Ruin by Moonlight” by Frederik Marinus Kruseman, 1862 – Thank you Rijksmuseum
Logo: Daniel Mirro and JC | Design: JC
Written and Recorded by High Strange 2020-2021
Mastered By Rich Tapper
malsonus.com 