Intro:
From Eden to Ashes:
And so has man fallen
Upon this pitiful pedestal.

Leaders of despots,
Reign mighty from your thrones of sand
While you can.

I. Fade
Now our Golden Age of Prosperity
Has lain stagnant and been covered with rust
Disregard the plans for what it should be
The dreams of that time lie matted with dust
And the clockwork of progress lost a cog
So the people lay feeble and listless
For they no longer see through choking fog;
Aspirations sleep in eternal rest
And this race slows its pace until we stop
No longer remembering what we were
And shambles replaces hands at the top
And the screams of our hearts are pulled under
For they know come the rise of tomorrow
All of this change shall become our sorrow.

II. Degenerate
The years usher in a new breed of souls
Composed of falsities and paper hearts
A man like Sophocles shudders to know
Great men have fallen to simpler parts
Eager for meager bounties born of greed
Begotten by your tools spattered with blood
And the wrongs are replanted as a seed
That, when nurtured will mature to a flood
That will rush through the world, tear Beauty down
And reap Her into the harvest to come
And spare not the time to mimic a frown
When her tattered remains attempt to run
Here hails the rise of man's depredations
The start of the degenerate nation

III. Ashen Wings
What shattered the bond that held you so long
To heavy chains that tethered you astray?
How your ears must ache from this siren song
As your feet stumble as they find the way
But even Angels' have learned how to fall
As their robes of white bleed that much dimmer
So have you heard the whisper of that call
Your frail heart lured by that stray glimmer
But as mortals do, our souls bare the stain
As the wings we strive for all turn to ash
And salvation lies in storing the pain
That all of our faults shall hang at our sash
And as Phoenixes' rise from what they were
So do ashen wings into forever

IV. Intaglio (Emblem)
A memory hides beneath my finger
Some long forgotten name etched on a grave
And somehow its spirit still may linger
But know this might not be said for the brave
This stone is an easel for a steel brush
Although the paint has been sullied with grime
And never was a medium so lush
As this embellishment darkened by time
And although the fine craftsman lays silent
His imprint has been disturbed from its sleep
When his brethren became much more violent
Towards the art he once made, and now he weeps
When the future erects monsters that rust
What he had left on the stone falls to dust

V. Pandora
Now the men of tomorrow crave answers
And their greed is never sated for long
And it shall not be silenced by banter
For it feeds the desire of the throng
'till they seek the forbidden elixirs'
That whisper of promises that may come
And their hands shall begin to move quicker
Though they'll forget the importance of some
In their haste to create new inventions
To lengthen their existence in this place
And ignorance seeps from their intentions
As they struggle to be first in this race
And as much as they wish to end their strife
Their creations shall just shorten their life

VI. Hollow Report
The products of their labors are faulty
Just failures of what their minds could achieve
The tears that fall to their wounds are salty
With the recognition that they must grieve
For the horrors that they have helped to tend
These creatures of iron, silver and steel
That exist to erase what they cannot mend
And never given the power to feel
The pain they sow as they tear into dreams
That live in the flesh of the ones they seek
And lodge in a heart that brims at the seams
With hopes shattered; now so weak, now so weak
And the sound of the guns echo with pain
And the stains remain red beneath God's rain

VII. Whimper
And not a single voice will dare bring light
Upon all the sickly creationists'
Empty stays the ranks of this final fight
For truth to uproot all sin has kissed
And all they can manage is a whimper
Sad attempts to let their consciences' scream
As they allow this monster to simmer
And slither into our most sacred dream
And even though their mouths are not smothered
They all continue to refuse to speak
For they would all leave that task to a brother
That they do not know a sin has made weak
So the banner of brotherhood lays still
As all of their kind continue to kill

VIII. Retribution
All who were wronged seek solace in that sin
That these crusaders were so much against
And with these actions they again begin
The tirade that made them first raise defense
And their anger refuses to subside
And they draw the same blades that they buried
So with a God they now choose to confide
As they ensure their demons are harried
As those same demons had done to their hearts
They carry the standard albeit fake
And they partake with false courage their parts
While they all whisper their lies like the snake
These acts that they make for salvation’s sake
Are the tools that shall cause them to break

IX. Siren
Even as men try to shelter their ears
They still play victim to temptation's voice
A demoness that preys off of their fears
That they shell never again have the choice
To hearken again to their wills ' unheard
Forever the slave of conformity
So much like the once spirited caged bird
One of the multitudes without a plea
They are robbed of a spirit of their own
Artificial constructs wrought so poorly
Composed of molded flesh and feeble bone
Someone must notice these shadows; surely
Surely there is someone who misses these souls
That were drawn by that call so long ago

X. Prometheus
And now reminiscent of that tale old
Is man bound to his actions dark and bleak
Enslaved to ideals; flame burning cold
Food for what he nurtured; left to grow weak
And he is chained by what he called freedom
An attempt to synthesize perfect life
He is master of his own false kingdom
Looking from atop his prison of strife
And never again shall King Man descend
From his chains that proclaim his sovereignty
Only chill air may the master befriend
Tragic hero of his posterity
And the Vultures of Time shall torment him
Until naught but bone shall be left of him

XI. The Kingdom
The wind shall than whisper through the remains
Of the Legacy that man has left here
And the ones left below shall hear the chains
Rattle as reminder of their last fear:
That the last legacy shall be the last
Their tools shall shatter; leave them alone
And slowly shall they lose all of their past
And only leave fragments of unknown bones
And now they take in all that they have left
A mocking shadow of their ambitions
All the promise they once looked to bereft;
Voices once so loud give no suggestions
They should be content with the Rule they sought
Yet now they but weep for all they have wrought

XII. Deconstruction
So now the last remnants begin to fall
Turning to dust like the things they had turned
To ashes in their quest to heed the call
Of a temptress by whom all have been spurned
The process of their goals has been reversed
The dream of construction ending in ruin
And the blessing they sought turned to thing cursed
So all of their achievements now lay strewn
Along a pathway matted with their blood
That they had spilt in the hopes of rebirth
But too late they see the oncoming flood
That so coldly takes them back in the earth
And finally the tale of their song
Begins to soften to a tune so wrong

XIII
The Kingdom lies silent; absent the king
And the subjects lie scattered; motionless
No longer do the chains create a ring
That stirs its victims from a sleep restless
A fire still smolders; the last witness
To the tragedy called the fall of man
And as it was known, man now lies listless
Victims to a fact as only man can
Enact with a foolish accuracy,
Being that the end was always in sight
Instead of avoiding what they could see
They all stubbornly tried to obtain flight
With wings that were always destined to burn
And now there are no more pages to turn