Lamb Of God - As The Palaces Burn (2003)

 1. Ruin
2. As The Palaces Burn
3. Purified
4. 11th Hour
5. For Your Malice
6. Bootscraper
7. A Devil In God's Country
8. In Defense Of Our Good Name
9. Blood Junkie
10. Vigil

1. Ruin

The knowledge that seeking the favor of another
Means the murder of self.
This is the resolution
The end of all progress
The death of evolution
It bleeds all life away.
Silence speeds the path to the streams of solace that run so few and narrow.
Brooks that babble the sounds of torture.
You will one day rise
To flood the banks of the chosen.
This is the art of ruin.
This is the resolution
The end of all progress
The death of evolution
It bleeds all life away.
I will show you all that I have mastered
Fear. Pain. Hatred. Power.
This is the art of ruin.


2. As The Palaces Burn

The fiends have gagged a generation of pacified fools
Bound by our greed a nation enslaved as corporate tools.
Arise and raze the legacy of their lies
To realize that this in itself is an ascension
Towards the day we revolt.
As the seeds you've cast away take hold
War will be born.
Rejoice, the age of the fall has begun
We'll dance as the palaces burn.
A shot gun blast into the face of deceit
You'll gain your just reward.
We'll not rest until the purge is complete
You will reap what you've sown.
My redemption lies in your demise.
In such a world as this does one dare to think for himself?
The paradox of power and peace will destroy itself
To know the truth and live in fear of no man.
To realize that this in itself is an ascension
Toward the day we revolt.
As the seeds you've cast away take hold
War will be born.
Rejoice, the age of the fall has begun
We'll dance as the palaces burn.
My redemption lies in your demise.
Rejoice, the age of the fall has begun.
We'll dance as the palaces burn.


3. Purified

Can the pestilence within you be bled out
May I have the honor of this amputation?
Know that you have made an enemy
To show you the meaning of indignity
I live now solely for the pleasure of your slow decay.
Feel the pain of vengeance burn you,
Soon you shall know silence.
With trembling hands you'll beg for mercy.
I'll show you none.
Purified by my hand
In this my world
It is salvation.
Your futile existence draws to a close
A cloak of lies drops.
The lies drop.


4. 11th Hour

The hour of reckoning draws near
Judgment day is here and gone
Sweetly she draws me into her arms
A liquid embrace to chase the day way.
Sedate Numb Deaf and Dumb
Stumbling into solitude.
A clouded judgment day is fueled.
Take me under your black wings
Mark my words and remember me.
So sweetly she shucks away at my time
So sweetly she draws me nigh
Closer and closer towards never ending sleep
Spin the bottle
Kiss only the bottle.
The dark mistress of many, beholden to none
Slips a ring of needles around your arm in an engagement
Eternal engagement
Never consummated.
Take me under your black wings
Mark my words and remember me.
Destroyer of senses.
So take as needed for the pain
Another gray morning dawns across an ashen sky.
My sweet demoness beckons me
Ever again and again and again and again.
The dark mistress of many, beholden to none
My sweet demoness beckons me
Ever again and again and again and again and again.
Take me under your black wings.
Jacked up on the taste of self-destruction.


5. For Your Malice

Welcome home to my reality.
So you taste yourself every time?
This must be your pleasure
This your swan song I'll sing for you.
I'll cut the words from your mouth
You'll never speak my name again.
Locked up and sold the fuck out
Don't think you won't see me again.
It'll come back three times
Once in the name of deceit
Twice for your malice
Three times when I take you away.
This is a homicide daydream
I won't waste my hate on you.
All that you've claimed not to be
Has now come to define you.
It'll come back three times
Once in the name of regret
Twice for your envy
Three times when I take you away.
Turn on my heels
And spit apathy on this bridge you have burnt.
Feast on my own blood
I'll drain myself to sleep.
I'll rise from death to knife this beast
These last regrets the ones I keep.
It'll come back three times
Once in the name of deceit
Twice for your malice
Three times when I take you away.


6. Bootscraper

Watch the broken common man
Drown his sorrows at unhappy hour.
Dirty and sweaty
With just enough to get by.
Calluses on his hands calluses on his soul
Hard-boiled son of a bitch
Scraping away on the down hill grind.
It's a means to an end, a mean end for most.
Death and domestication ends in shattered hopes
Can't see the hand at the other end of the leash.
Turn and bite.
Turn and bite the hand that bleeds you dry.
Throw yourself a bone, no one else will.
Compromise leads to self-loathing
Money the excrement of labor.
And you don't get to keep shit
Except politics and power trips and a bad breath down your neck.
I know
For I have toiled in the halls of the mighty
And not received a teardrop in a bucket.
Motherfuck it.
The world doesn't owe me a thing
But you do (Motherfucker).
So crooked when you die they're gonna have to screw your ass into the ground.
As life slowly unravels
With nothing to show but wasted time and dust
A thousand points of lies falling on the deafened funeral eardrums of the blind masses.
Rise above, extract your life.
Will you look within
Then turn around and bite?
Day by day the mask suffocates your life
Is this any way to live?
No fucking way.


7. A Devil In God's Country

Down south soldier
Third world soldier
My vengeance will be swift and terrible
Many will die.
I am the distance between two points
Forgotten. A Void.
I dig holes brother.
Well, I've got a bone to pick
And a nerve to pluck
A skin to get under
And a home to wreck.
I've got ends to meet
So I've got a job to do.

[x2]
Acrimonious and sanctified
Call me what you will.

Stick to your guns
The difference is mine are loaded.
Taste the sting of your arrogance
Stuck in this screeching bitch called life
Drop the coins and send you to Charon.
I will have my vengeance
In this life or the next.
Well, I've got a sucker to punch
And a back to stab
A head to kick in
And a throat to slit.

[x2]
I've got a job to do
Harsh and unrepentant.

[x2]
Acrimonious and sanctified
Call me what you will.

Step back before you're the next to get served
With some Southern hospitality.


8. In Defense Of Our Good Name

Returning to solace
So sweet like honeysuckle on the tongue
The sound of silence blesses my ears
Enveloping like the earth I will one day lie in
Metropolis is bad to wither the soul
Roaring concrete and steel washes you in blood.
So let you point and laugh
Provincial ain't so bad.
Take me back down to where I belong
To rust in rivers.
I do not covet any man's life
I know my place all too well
One man's paradise is another man's living hell.
To each their own
Generation's ago made this place my own
The roots are deep and strong
Carry them wherever I go.

Never wanted your approval
Never wanted your acceptance
Never wanted to be anything but me
Never wanted to be anywhere but here.
Carry me Southeast bound home

To speak in defense of our good name
Lay me to rest with my kin
In the ground of God's country.

Lash out at any who would smear you with hate
Deify no one, never crawl ashamed
The past screams injustice on Southern night wind
Whips manacles chains musket balls
A dark history never forgotten
Only misconception remains.

Speak in defense of our good name
The blood of kin grants absolution
I'll join them soon enough in the ground of God's country.

Never wanted your acceptance
Never wanted your approval
Never wanted to be anything but me
Never wanted to be anywhere but right here.


9. Blood Junkie

A shallow little jackal of a man posing as a hawk.
Conniving opportunist
Lease the blade the gun the bomb in the name of justice.
A violent panacea for what ails the nation
In advancement for the pig.
You'll not wrest the truth from my hands
Eyes never closed clarity.
Clamped down in a grip so tight on ordinary horror.
Peering through a curtain of blood.
Retribution or vengeance it matters not which
As long as the pig stays on top of the ladder of bone his father has built.
Ashes to ashes to the dust
Eaten spiced with ambivalence.
The nation swallows it all whole
Weakened by their collective neck in the noose.
Commerce brings war
Jihad has come to both sides.
Eye for an eye fire for fire
Raining death as the towers crumble.
This will never end.
Left without a choice
By the fiscal elite
War is set in motion by higher powers.
A pissing contest for the unknown.
Left bankrupt we all die inside.
As a couple jumps hand in hand to their death.
Wrapped in swaddling lies and laid in a dumpster
Spoon fed shit doesn't even turn their stomachs.
Gaping mouths yawn for more abuse
Someone needs to tip the nest.
The pig ascends
As I sink deeper
Seething misanthropic
Waiting for my death.


10. Vigil

Our father thy will be done.
I have denied this life its worth
I will not be the victim.
Sickness to you my master
Here's to getting worse
Hope it kills you faster.
Show me how it hurts to rot from the inside out.
This vigil burns
Until the day our fires overtake you.
Our father we forsake you.
Blessed be his name
Nothing now the same.
Ask me why I hate
Why I've prayed to see the nation that I loved disintegrate
And gladly give my life
That revolution regenerates.
In honor of the strife of those who've died
In generations before for your blood stained glory
I reject you
I deny you
I defy you to continue.
Smite the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered.