The band incorporates black metal influences and symphonic elements into an overall grandiose canvas, with the elaborate lyrics of Byron Roberts painting a picture of battles in an antediluvian age where Atlantis had not yet been destroyed and the continents were still joined in a Pangaean mass. A predominant feature is the use of epic keyboards played by Jonny Maudling who composes and arranges the music. The guitar, drums and keyboards work together as an integral entity rather like a symphonic work. The vocals of Byron Roberts are a mixture of spoken word and black metal screams making the songs more like stories set to music than anything else. The stories are told like a play, with many characters (or groups of characters, speaking in unison) exchanging dialogue. Byron uses different vocalizations and effects to set them apart. The songs frequently have very long titles. Byron intends to release some short stories and novellas based on his lyrics and also some graphic novels created in collaboration with the artist Martin Hanford.
They currently have six albums out. The music for the latest one, "The Chthonic Chronicles" was recorded and produced at Jonny Maudling's studio "Waylands Forge", while the vocals were recorded at Academy Music Studio, the same studio where the band's previous five albums were recorded.
Six Score and Ten Oblations to a Malefic Avatar
Bal-Sagoth Lyrics
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The following are excerpts from handwritten notes discovered secreted in a hidden alcove in the west wing of the Phillips-Ervin Museum, London, England. Sealed in a leather canister, the aged script was accompanied by an ornate bronze key of unknown origin. The author of the journal remains unidentified, and the artifact was only chanced upon following the museum's partial destruction during the spring of 1941...
Fragmentary entry I:
I have come into possession of a certain ancient book, a collection of arcane scrawlings reputed to have been derived from an even earlier transcription, allegedly lost during the great fire of 1666. The Chthonic Chronicles! I cannot disclose here the precise and rather unsavoury means by which I acquired this weather-worn tome, but I immediately recognized the veracity of the fevered inscriptions contained within. Apparently derived from an incomplete Latin translation of the original source material, the text sporadically lapses into an indecipherable tongue which the transcription cryptically notes as being Old High Atlantean. Glyphs, sigils, occult pictograms, six score and ten oblations to some malign entity of colossal evil...some diabolical avatar of the Z'xulth. Khthon! I must delve further into the foreboding depths of this great black book...
Terrifying axioms, shadow-haunted lexicon,
Lore from time immemorial, acolytes, diabolists,
Blackened tome of blasphemy, the Chthonic Chronicles!
Lore derived from ancient tongues, Grimm's Hold Sanitarium,
Oblations here, six score and ten, this avatar, malevolent!
Fragmentary entry II:
Caught in the maleficent whorls and verticils of this dark tome... but what lies at the heart of it? A vespertine viper's nest of sublime wickedness! What I discovered within this shadow-haunted volume was a terrifying axiom so inestimably terrible in its magnitude that it would shatter all man's carefully orchestrated views of the cosmos and render utterly redundant previous theories on the origin of humankind. Lore dating from time immemorial; lore surviving in the records of long extinct civilizations, be it inscribed upon parchment now crumbled to dust, etched into the sand-whipped, glyph-scored stone of hoary temples, or committed to verbal traditions long since ingrained into some collective tribal memory. This is no globally common myth cycle, no collection of universally allegorical folk tales; it is all cold, pitiless truth!
And yet, such enlightenment has not been a prize easily won...I have communed with native shamans, consulted with misanthropic diabloists, I have confronted the martial agents, acolytes and cultists of clandestine sects who would see their knowledge safeguarded at all costs. Hildebrandt and the Quorum have treacherously attempted to have me commited to the baleful confines of Grimm's Hold Sanitarium, yet I have circumvented their insidious plot to put an end to my vaunted research. Damn their traitorous eyes! I must confer with Blackthorne upon his return from the Peruvian expedition... or mayhap Stone if ever the poor wretch regains his sanity...
Stygian gramarye, etched with blasphemy,
Whorls and verticils, black with baleful spells,
Vespertine conjurings, doomsayer's prophecy,
Pellucid lotus-dreams, spawn of the elder fiends,
Cryptic halls, squamous mass, malevolent diabolist,
Black desire, nighted woe, shunned and forbidden tome,
Brooding dark, deepest night, ritual, abhorrent sight,
Whispering, malignity, hearken to the summoning!
(This black desire, this nighted woe, this vile shunned and forbidden tome,
In the brooding darkness of the night, now witness this abhorrent sight,
The whispering, malignity, now hearken to the summoning!)
Fragmentary entry III:
What titanic demi-gods once strode the boiling surface of the young earth, treading the shattered surface of mighty Pangaea beneath their ersatz feet? What fearsome entities were already inestimably ancient when mankind himself was naught but a collection of mindless random atoms, a viscous puddle of gelid protoplasm teeming with the raw materials of life, transient cells of primordial slime, all naught but malleable and tractable clay to be worked at by unimaginable sculptors, immortal star-spanning fiends! What inhuman eyes even now watch the inconsequential toilings of man from afar? The answers to these questions of denied primacy and direful cosmogony were too repulsively horrific to contemplate, and yet... I knew the truth!
And more terrifying still... The Z'xulth and their villainous agents of depravity even now walk among us!
But what price these revelations? What dire agents of malignity safeguard such cryptic axioms against the prying intellect of man? I must confesss, oftimes in the brooding darkness of the night, I have sensed their malefic gaze upon me, lurking, inexorably dogging my every step, their existence perceived only as some unnamable sense of fearful unease, and the occaisional glimpse of black shimmering against black in the depths of the teeming shadows... I hear them whispering when the mantle of darkness silences the world, and the sibilant words they utter are not for the minds of men to know. O' how I wish I had left those vile and fathomless depths of cryptical lore wholly and mercifully unplumbed! O', how I long for the assuaging balm of ignorance to once again soothe my ravaged mind! But such pleadings are, of course, ultimately in vain. I must keep my wits about me. Even now the stars align, the celestial spheres moving into the prophesied positions of the great astral conjunction. Am I to be ground to dust between the grand gears of this pitiless cosmic engine of destruction? The die is cast, the endgame nears.
Wait... they come, they come for me! Is it Hildebrandt, or something far, far worse which stalks me this night? The key... I must hide the key!
The lyrics of Bal-Sagoth's song Six Score and Ten Oblations to a Malefic Avatar are the representation of the journey of an unknown person as documented in three fragments. The singer has obtained an ancient book known as the Chthonic Chronicles containing a collection of arcane, cryptic rites and spells of clandestine cults, and has been investigating its malevolent cosmic secrets. The journal entries show that the singer's further explorations through the profound darkness of this black book have exposed him to an abundance of perilous and mind-bending revelations that have almost driven him to the brink of insanity. The revelations related to the existence of demi-gods that once strode the earth, fearsome entities, and villainous agents of depravity who walk among us.
The dark and murky tone of the lyrics is heavily influenced by the Lovecraftian mythos, and it effectively conveys the sense of a world where ancient, malevolent entities are ever-present, even if their existence is hidden from the majority of people. As the singer descends further into the abyss of forbidden knowledge, he becomes increasingly paranoid and fearful, sensing the malefic gaze of the invisible beings following his every step. The journal entries hence depict the slow descent into madness and paranoia ultimately culminating in the final fragment's climax.
Line by Line Meaning
Terrifying axioms, shadow-haunted lexicon,
Frightening truths and cursed vocabulary.
Clandestine cults, ancient spells, cryptic rites, the summoning!
Secret worship, antique magic, enigmatic rituals, the calling forth!
Lore from time immemorial, acolytes, diabolists,
Knowledge from ancient epochs, followers, devil-worshipers,
Blackened tome of blasphemy, the Chthonic Chronicles!
A dark book of heresy, the subterranean histories!
Lore derived from ancient tongues, Grimm's Hold Sanitarium,
Knowledge from archaic languages, the institution of madness,
Oblations here, six score and ten, this avatar, malevolent!
Sacrifices offered, one hundred and thirty, to this evil deity!
Stygian gramarye, etched with blasphemy,
Infernal magic, inscribed with profanity,
Whorls and verticils, black with baleful spells,
Circles and spirals, dark with harmful incantations,
Vespertine conjurings, doomsayer's prophecy,
Evening summonings, predictions of doom,
Pellucid lotus-dreams, spawn of the elder fiends,
Clear visions of hellish beings, born of ancient demons,
Cryptic halls, squamous mass, malevolent diabolist,
Mysterious chambers, scaly mass, evil sorcerer,
Black desire, nighted woe, shunned and forbidden tome,
Dark longing, despairing sorrow, avoided and prohibited book,
Brooding dark, deepest night, ritual, abhorrent sight,
Depressing darkness, darkest night, ceremony, detestable vision,
Whispering, malignity, hearken to the summoning!
Murmuring, malevolence, listen to the calling forth!
Lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: BYRON A. ROBERTS, JONATHAN MAUDLING
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind