[Intro]
Cold chrome coffin
Drifting past black suns
Old flag fading
On rusted guns
Static prayers
In a dead tongue hiss
He laughs
Unshaven
Says
"All of this is his"
[Verse 1]
Madman from the mountains
Passport made of scars
Pocket full of broken teeth
Maps to stolen stars
Muttered jokes in Romanian
To the busted control screen
"Today I crown myself a king
Of everything unseen"
[Chorus]
Time capsule over Carpathia
Spinning in a crooked halo
He came to own the emptiness
But the void said
"Stay low"
Time capsule over Carpathia
He screams
"This throne is mine"
Then the walls rip open sideways
And the worlds crawl through the spine
(woah-oh, worlds crawl through the spine)
[Verse 2]
First thing through
A goat with seven eyes
Playing bone-wood fiddle
Over children’s lullabies
Next
A choir made of insects
Clicking in 7/9
Their shadows stomp in circles
Around his fragile mind
Then a thousand metal forests
Walk in on iron feet
Each tree wears a gas mask
Each root grows a beat
Drums like cannons in a canyon
Voices shredding
Raw and torn
Every scream a different planet
Every riff a newborn storm
[Chorus]
[Bridge]
[low vocal register]
He shouts
"I’m the virus!"
They hiss
"We’re the code"
He says
"I’ll rule this cosmos!"
They laugh
"You missed the vote"
[growled vocals]
Tentacles of radio
Wrap around his neck
Every ego
Every anthem
Pulled apart
Dissected
Checked
[whispered vocals]
Tiny folk tune in his memory
Grandma’s kitchen
Bitter bread
Spills out of the ship’s old speakers
Wakes the ghosts he thought were dead
[crescendo]
Creatures stop their war-dance
Turn toward that trembling sound
All those jaws and mirrored faces
Sway like wheat above the ground
[Chorus]
[Outro]
Now he dances with the monsters
Boots on broken satellite
Bare throat
Raw voice
Laughing
As they shake the endless night
His crown’s a cracked antenna
Still humming distant prayer
A mad Romanian emperor
Of everywhere and nowhere