Sacrifice - A Final Paroxysm

from Self

October 19th, 2015
6 tracks
49:28
Self
Self
Sacrifice - A Final Paroxysm
0:00
7:47
Sacrifice - A Final Paroxysm
Terzij de Horde
What resolve remains to me When nothing survives and nothing suffices When doubt has broken all horizons But to extend will Beyond will’s capacity To cast off The corpse of lies Through sacrifice, to hidden grounds My means to probe the self Are careful, violent, final Long shuttered life Now shudders and trembles With boundless, groundless desire For plethora, openness, disorder This is the antithesis of ritual Put an end to sin, if sin there is To expiation, if expiation there is Reeling toward onrushing crisis Toward willed annihilation No vain flight on wax wings But a leap to end all faith Through sacrifice, to gateless gates My means to probe the self Are careful, violent, final The creature, the traveller, is torn apart Opened, turned outward toward death Its thinking deranged and outraged Its seamless garment rent A corpse of lies Cast off Opened, turned outward toward death Deranged and outraged The seamless garment rent A final paroxysm, The birth of sight
9:08

The album focuses on the problem of self. Six tracks explore different ways to live, or fail to live, with self and world. They embody the struggles these paths and strategies create: blindness, suffering, a desire for release, the destruction of self and others as well as the turning towards -or away from- life.

Self as prison, self as a source of power, self as vessel for manipulation by outside forces, self as shield and as inner world, self as medium for Dionysian rapture, self as something to be overcome.

In the six songs that constitute ‘Self’, the rage of black metal is paired with a cathartic destruction as well as a contemplative, sometimes crawling melancholy. Instead of navel gazing or the worship of constructs, ‘Self’ is analysis forced. A cerebral celebration of liberation at all costs and a requiem for spheres rendered apart.

The artwork of ‘Self’ depicts ants, consumed by Ophiocordyceps. These parasitic fungi appropriate the brains of whichever host they infect, to manipulate and effectively destroy its self-regulating features. Through this annexation, the ants become empty shells of what they once were, governed by a destruction from within, imposed and irreconcilable.

Credits

All songs and lyrics by Terzij de Horde
Recorded in February and March 2015 at Studio Independent Recordings, Utrecht (NL)
Recorded and mixed by Quintijn Verhoef
Mastered by James Plotkin

Photographs by Dr. Charissa de Bekker
Artwork by Richard