What it's about: A man's rescue attempt in the Otherworld during Samhain
Why it was chosen: While referencing Donn and Samhain, this the album's only true original short story - as Bewildering Duress is heavily inspired by the Swift Runner legend. It tells how a grief (and anger) stricken man awakens from "sleep" to find his significant other missing. He recalls her interest in the occult/Samhain and how she wrote about it in her diary. He then sets off on a mission to bring her back from the Otherworld. However, upon finding her he discovers a terrifying truth: he was dead already and that Donn was deceiving him. This story deals with misplaced anger, judgement, and jumping to conclusions.
lyrics
Freed from Morpheus my consciousness returns to a vacant darkness
My anger consumes all concern as I recall the madness born of eventide
Though through these pages there appears conviction in this arrant fiction
Her sanity though seemingly lost, may have found a revelation
“Under Samhain’s sky through both forest and mire, follow the path by will-o'-the-wisps’ fire, to cave housing Veil for both young, still, and tired… Tech Duinn”
Though maybe this mystery will lead me…
This forest is so funereal with skeletal thickets squeezing moonlight and even sound from the surroundings
And a heavy mist obscures the ground and climbs to the canopy
My imagination stoked by either fear or folly
There’s a faint hint of hymns from afar
Forsaking rational I follow the flickering lights and melody
Through both forest and mire I found myself at an eldritch cave
The hell mouth beckons and terrifies, yet I’m compelled to proceed
The air is heavy with haze creating a canvas for luminaries
In its recesses, a dolmen gate somehow untouched by time
And amidst the arch an ethereal rift shimmers beckoning me forth
Through the haze I’m consumed by a chilling comfort
Cloaked in black and bone a figure donning a deer skull approached me
He said, “Ignore the fires, for there áes sídhe gather and will lead you astray
But’s these distractions pale compared to cŵn annwn which will hunt you
Stay too long and the Veil will fade with Samhain’s sky”
Pressing on I can’t help but feel amazed
The wonder, the tranquility, the allure is hard to shake
There’s a weight in this air I soon realized
My resolve tested, is this where we truly go when we all die?
No – this world is absurd, all its splendor a lie
A delusion, a fiction, of which I cannot abide
Amidst the canvas of darkness I see shades surrounding a campfire
Chthonian figures singing songs of sorrow to a solemn figure
She sat silently and slowly her phlegmatic gaze met my eyes
Tir Na Nog… is so close…
I attempted to argue yet my fervent words failed to persuade
In a moment of stillness a horrifying baying broke the silence
The cŵn annwn are hunting… I can’t stay any longer
Oddly the ominous howls grew strangely softer…
Their ember-like eyes burned bright in the blackness
Paralyzed, I witnessed three pale beasts approach me followed by their master
The figure cloaked in black
“Under Samhain’s sky through both forest and mire, follow the path by will-o'-the-wisps’ fire, to cave housing Veil for both young, still, and tired… Tech Duinn”
Though maybe this deity never meant to aid me …
To me, to my house, you shall all come after your deaths…
Myths, legends, and folklore with their colorful imagery and imaginative narratives often served as not only entertainment
but cautionary tales for their time. Foretoken borrows from this tradition by blending Symphonic elements and Extreme Metal to retell these stories of violence, tragedy, and sorrow, from around the world....more
