Très original, varié, barré. Passant du heavy au death, du black au cyber, du gothic au prog...
L'album contient un seul morceau d'une heure, coupé en plusieurs plages.
C'est un album concept de science fiction.
Voilà les paroles intégrales :
A Black hole is swallowing the sun...
Their world was ending.
Stars foretell dismal tidings - erupting then subsiding.
A cosmic prank? A virtual cataclysm!
Distant beacons gasp and die, stars that burst and tremble,
before our eyes the heavens crumble to the beast.
[Into their solarsystem a black hole was moving,
a gravitational well - a thing so powerful even photons couldn't escape it's grasp.
Devouring every atom in it's path it crept ominously in from the stellar depths,
leaving a trail of utter emptiness behind.]
They learned of it's existence through a nearby novaburst -
a beast was coming their way,
drinking stars to slake its thirst.
Disturbing the gravitational bonds that bind the worlds.
"Destiny... Bright future, you're nowhere to be seen,
and where do we go from this point on - our world abruptly ended.
Destiny, destiny - abruptly ended.
Is the fate of our kind to be exiled and forever be the homeless ones?"
[Realising their sun was in the path of the destructive mass abd subject
to inevitable and immediate annihilation,
the structure of their civilisation was shaken.
But their kind were not inclined to emotional extremes -
a species ofinvertebrates,
their blood as cold as the continental swamps from which they'd risen.
Soon they set their collective mind on a single task -
the survival of their race, and to this end -
the migration from the homeworld. All resources were directed to a immense project,
the construction of an enormous vessel capable of carrying a vast number of them
onto a journey of unknown proportion...]
"For persistence of existence and the future of our kind,
breaking up from all we know of and the doomed ones left behind."
Invincible - moving in from the void.
Insatiable - solarsystems destroyed.
Undisturbed for billions of years seven planets thread their dance in circles,
'round and F-type star, their blazing mother -
by the dark intruder all is squandered!
[While their nemesis loomed ever closer to impose its cataclysmic force upon them,
one of the small moons circling the planet was being excavated and remodeled to function as
a gargantuan spaceship.
Vast chambers were prepared to hold the millions of specimen
representing every known species of their world.
Scouts were sent out to collect everything from the small insectoid creatures
at the bottom of the foodchain to the giant carnivorous slugs that ruled tha arctic swamps.
As many as time permitted of the indigenous forms of life would be brought
along in the migration. If possible, the complete environment would be present
if the opportunity occurred to recreate it someplace else,
were they to succeed in finding a world in the proper stage of evolution -
with the right atmospheric conditions, fertile, yet still empty of life...
Shuttles went back and forth, back and forth, constructionworkers,
machineengineers and biologists worked endlessly,
slowly the project began taking shape.
Destruction crept ever closer...]
Bringer of obliteration - inigmatic monster.
Flee from what can not be fought, forced into migration.
Powerless, pitiful - it's inevitable.
"Into nowhere - regionsbeyond knowledge, regions of mystery.
Leaving behind millions of us, left without hope - dying.
Always in our minds they live on."
"...so farewell, and don't look back, just make our kind live on!"
[As that last message was received, the mighty engines that were anchored
deep into the surface of the Moon started tugging it away from the motherworld.
Slowly, resisted by the inertia of the Moons enormous mass,
it accelerated out through the planetsystem and away at an angle from the sinister
black hole, now already eating the outer planets.]
"For persistence of existence and the future of our kind,
breaking up from all we know of and the doomed ones left behind."
[Influenced by the force of the intruders overpowering gravity,
the very rotation of the planet was disturbed,
and the order of a billion years was broken.
Drawn from its natural orbit its surface was put into a state of total chaos.
Huge tidal waves swept around the globe and storms of unpredecessed fury erased
most life on the planet in an unstoppable onslaught.
A world once full of life suddenly lain in ruins,
eons of evolution terminated in a few excruciating moments...]
"So it's our final hours, the world is trembling now,
a strange vibration through us, tells it's time to go."
In roaring protest oceans heave and strike upon the land,
and mountains crumble under forces out of hand.
Their destiny - obliteration?
Their legacy - a new creation?
The light from the perishing sun, erupting behind,
a beacon so blindingly brilliant - a luminous tombstone.
Gaining velocity now away from the squalor, a desperate quest has begun - their exodus.
Travelling to new horizons, in hope of a future - their exodus.
Environmental evolution, life in balanced distribution - eons mold the species,
until everything connects...
Can life be recreated, can the pieces of a broken world ever be rejoined?
[Heading for a cluster of fairly mature F- and G-type stars in the direction out from
the galaxys center, they calculated their chances to find a habitable planet
about one out of a hundred. Still this was the best choice they had,
the surrounding cubic kiloparsecs of space mainly occupied by blazing stars
of the blue-white O- and B-type, too young and hot to nourish life.
Still - should they ever reach their destination, the question still remained -
could they ever succeed in rebuilding what took nature a billion years to form?]
Their destiny - obliteration?
Their legacy - a new creation?
[Not inclined for sentimental throughts,
they set their mind on letting the past be past and adapting to their new existence -
a race of cosmic wanderers, explorers of unseen lands...]
"Ahead - the universe!
Our offspring shall be a new breed of conquerors, coming in at lightspeed.
And future revelations, the worlds that lie ahead,
will shape to the purpose of our presence."
"No longer will we be the meek ones, we are prepared for war!"
Way back in ancient history something occurred that still haunts their memory.
Out of the sky aliens descended, - their placid lives were turned into enslavement.
A vile breed of merciless predators, cold intellect, evil and superior,
their arrival struck like a meteor - within a breath the world was in a stupor.
Imagination revealed to be exceeded by the truth,
now alien monsters wreacing havoc in their midst,
enslaving those unfortunate abducted to a horrid fate.
"How could we ever know the terror that was coming? Indeed - we were naïvely meek,
but now our creed is altered."
...and in the blast of roaring engines all was lost.
Lost but now broken - that which is ruined can be built once more.
[In the present the usurpers were long gone, vanished into space as suddenly as they'd come...]
"But somewhere out there, lurking still the enemy - we must prepare!
We will be armored with fury, the craving for vengeance within our hearts..."
"Head for that star, it's not far - measured in galactic terms,
leave the old sun going nova astern.
Go where noone's gone before...
[So out into the great expanse of interstellar space they set forth,
treading the enormous distance between their own, dying sun and their galactic neighbors.
They knew little about spacetravel
and were not even sure that they would ever succeed in reaching their destination.
However, they felt pride in having achieved the first part of "the purpose",
in escaping the cataclysm that engulfed their planet,
and saving specimens of virtually every known form of life,
now kept for unknown time in the hibernationchambers deep inside the moonlet.
Through optical instruments and on electronic screens they observed the surrounding emptiness from the controlrooms,
suppressing the feeling of utter loneliness in the desolation of the cosmic waters...]
"As one surveys this ocean - vast and cold, will we reach across to that distant shore?
Pinpoints of light - the billion suns that shine like beacons from afar...
Strange, silent universe - forlorn, ever silent universe.
Eternal universe - this dark, never ending universe.
Mysterious universe - bright, shimmering, iridescent universe."
Pursueing the quest for a new hope, their future a straw for which they grope...
The iondrive a silent vibration through the itinerant Moon, a world asleep within its womb,
a starship ever accelerating, engines thrusting full, approaching lightspeed - powerful.
Instruments set to compensate if anomalies were to occur,
the fabric of space is twisted.
Mass and inertia fluctuates when close to the speed of light
the laws of physics shifted.
[In front of the helpless navigationteam the instruments
suddenly gave a startling pulse of erratic measures,
an all-systems-fail-situation was evolving within a few moments.
Left with nothing to judge from but
simple eyevision they hurried to the observationports,
just in time to watch the surrounding starscape getting blurred and distorted,
as if travelling at impossible speed.
Then suddenly, with a tremor through the Moon, blank screens came to life again...]
...several planets in orbit, bathed in the warmth of a sun -
friendly and welcoming, just like a miracle strangelyappeared.
"Wonders occur beyond reason - maybe this journey will end
sooner than dreamed of, defying the possible fate that we feared."
[For a time there was some excitement among the crew,
obviously the ship had slipped through a wormhole,
to appear from hyperspace into a unknown region.
Now they had absolutely no idea of their position,
but the planets circling the yellow star in front of them might prove to be just
what they set out to find. Still, they had to be cautious...]
Enemies!?
Gazing at the second planet from the sun, green and blue at the equator.
No doubt - there is life down there that flourishes and grows,
have they stumbled on the homeworld of their ill-remembered foe?
[A number of probes were send out for a rendezvous with the planet,
equipped with surveyingdevices of every kind. Meanwhile,
they kept the Moon falling inwards the sun on a course that would
simply it was just one of the millions of asteroids scattered throughout the system.
Scrutinizing the planet, the probes stealthily moved into orbit,
sending back visual information that seemed to justify their fears:
huge cities spread out for miles and miles,
pushing back the lush jungles that covered most continents.]
"Once more proven - we are not alone. Another world below - we must go on...
[...we are not alone, There... way below, must go on.] "
[It was obvious this was a highly developed civilization,
probably technologically more advanced than was their own.
There was no way of telling if this was really the home of the race
that had once raided them,
the probes had no means of distinguishing such detail from the surface.
However they deemed it improbable,
judging from the type of architecture and vessels detected.
In any circumstance this was not a place to fit their purpose -
already evolved with its own fauna and flora, and much too crowded.]
"There is no room for us here - our quest goes on...»
Lightspeed - plunge into hyperspace...
Wormholes - moving at dreamlike pace.
[Once again entering that mysterious other dimension, the universe faded.
Outside the ship there was only blackness and occasional streaks of purple light.
This time the passage lasted a long time.
Were they would end up they had no way of telling...]
No clue to where this jump is taking them, no instruments respond.
They might end up across the galaxy, or in the void beyond.
[Time passed inside the ship, the universe outside seemed to have vanished.
Outside the portholes there was nothing, just an empenetrable grayish, metallic glow.
First Navigator began to fear they had left the material universe.
The strange medium outside implied that they were no longer moving -
could they have entered an "exit" from the universe they knew?
Unfortunately, little was known in the science of such matters.
First Navigator didn't want to express his apprehension,
under pressure of the reliance from the team.
So they waited, patiently watching the inactive screens...
And so, after a long, ominous silence, a faint vibration was felt.
The gray un-matter gave way to the purple-bluish streaks of light
they had experienced previously.
A distorted image of a spiralgalaxy could be seen floating by,
a bluish glow, a feeling of queasiness.
Suddenly they were back in real space...]
The strangest paths they travel, strayed from the original design.
No way of knowing whether fate will be obnoxious or benign.
[Receiving data again, they set to the task of readjusting the plan to the new environment.
They had found themselves in a region of young,
white stars surrounded by dense sheets of green nebulosity.
Within these clouds of matter, hundreds of parsecs across,
they knew that new stars were being formed. Composed mostly of hydrogen and nitrogen,
the gas was getting denser in certain inner regions,
swirling and contractinghad once been created,
stars were being born right in front of them. The light was brilliant,
the space alive with colors reflected from the monumental gaspillars around them.
Awed by the beauty of it all, they watched in silence.]
Breathless...
[Immense, unfathomable in its splendor the view filled them with feelings of insignificance
and tranciency,
their ship nothing but a microscopic speck of dust drifting through this vast chamber of
stars.
A billion years from now,
when the very memory of their existence would be long and ever gone,
these stars that burned so furiously white would still be young and powerful.
Some of them would eventually form their
own family of planets where might one day rise another race of beings,
perhaps much like themselves but oblivious to the memory of the sleeping world
that once soared past their newborn sun...]
Turning up the power, accelerating again -
this place is not is not what they are searching for.
Beautiful but barren, radiation burned - too young for life.
Find another wormhole, warping dimensions again -
this place is not is not what they are searching for.
Enigmatic passage, network of secret ways - mysterious tunnel.
No clue to where this jump is taking them - no instruments respond.
They might end up across the galaxy, or in the void beyond.
This time passage was violent, rocking their very foundations.
Pounding like hammers, piercing like spears, hurled to their new destination.
Spinning mindlessly, beating them breathless and wailing.
Grinding relentlessly, warlike the sea they were sailing!
[A tremendous force battered the Moon,
tearing at the structure of the engines on the surface,
shattering the fragile ionizers that fueled the driveunits.
A nauseating disturbance of the space-time continuity made them lose all sense of reality,
flung to the walls they cringed in terror, bleeding and vomiting.
Glaring lights moved through the chambers, shifting shape,
pulsating irregularly, entities of pure energy examining the alien element the Moon
constituted in their unworldly realm.
Finally, culminating in a deafening roar of turbulent powers outside the light-beings moved
away, leaving them in sudden stillness.
Shaken and subdued they came to their senses, turning to the screens...]
Rings, spread like rippled water, fleeting...
the portal closing whence we came, vanishing like a mirage.
One step from extinction - the remainders of a world,
flee the threat of oblivion on a path of no return.
Irretrievably lost, destination unknown - blindly wandering, forever..?
They stare unblinking, without emotion, cold eyes that witness our demise - the stars.
"Lead us now, minds of cosmos, bring an end to our despair..."
Faintly - a crescent, outlined against the glowing halo of the galaxy.
[They had found themselves in a region void of stars,
somewhat above and outside the galactic disc.
Dropping out of hyperspace obviously occured when entering the gravityfield of
an object in the immediate path, so they reasoned.
Therefor they were confused by the emptiness of space around them,
until they spotted the dark globe lit only by the backdrop of the distant stars.]
Eternal night [...this world a graveyard],
an island remote [...an eerie, lonely outpost],
no warmth, no light [...dead, frozen ghostland],
corpses alone [...inhabit the cities embedded in ice].
A shadowempire - a planet fallen from grace,
dark, frozen ghostland - death rules this haunted place.
[There was no way of knowing how old this civilization was.
At a temperature just slightly above absolute zero it could have been preserved
for aeons in its present state.
Obviously this planet had strayed from the orbit around its sun,
probably influenced by an object of considerable mass,
which gravitypull had made it wander off into space...
Now completely static, affected neither by tide nor time,
it would remain a tombstone until the end of the universe.]
How many worlds did strive for consciousness but failed,
as a capricious fate decides to bring it down again?
How many worlds will rise and climb the narrow ladder through countless years of evolution,
all in vain?
Eternal night [...this world a graveyard], no warmth no light [...dead, frozen ghostland].
[There was a certain uncanny resemblance in what these creatures had suffered and
their own situation. (They braced themselves and turned away...]
"These beings failed and perished, we will be stronger!
Let's leave this dismal graveyard and brood no longer."
[Beginning to understand the basics of spacetravel,
analysing the data from the previous jumps they set their minds to the task of finding
a suitable star, which could be reached without interference from objects in the way.
An orange K-type star some ten parsecs away
was judged a likely host to a family of planets.
The course was set, acceleration was begun to full capacity -
the iondrive taking fuel from the sparse substance of space.
This time they felt a hint of anticipation as they made the jump -
could this be the star from which the dead planet had once sprung?
Its motion leemed to imply something of this signification...]
[Carefully planning the jump this time,
measuring the surrounding space for aberrations of any kind,
taking time to make calculations, the trip was over almost before they knew it.
In front of them burned the K-type star they had aimed for,
soon found to be orbited by at least a dozen planets,
of which three seemed possible targets for their colonization.
They found a gap in the succession of orbiting worlds,
which might have been the result of a planet gone artray...]
"Ahead once more, the darkest sea we sail,
where noone's gone before, this time we shall prevail."
The Journey has taken us through perils, and despair
finally reaching what we hoped to find somewhere.
[The innermost planet in the system was small,
burned and to no use for their purposes.
Second there was a bluish gasgiant of enormous size,
which in itself was no object of their attention,
but one of its moons was a world of atmosphere and oceans.
Outside the gasgiant there was a gap where they believed the
strayed planet had once orbited, then a rather small planet,
which showed signs of having evolved life on a primitive level.
Fourth in succession was a frostbitten world with a thin atmosphere,
a bit too cold for their liking but with large deposits of ice in the polarregions,
which made it interesting.
Now there was great excitement among the crew.
Of the three alternatives,
the second was the one they decided to focus on.
Preparations were made to make a closer inspection,
geologists and biologists were awakened from the hibernationchambers,
an explorationteam was designated and a vessel prepared to shuttle them down
to the planets surface...]
The Moon was laid in orbit around the newfound world, the team was ready to descend.
Tense with expectancy leaving the Moons interior - their apprehensions at an end?
The shuttles engines roaring as they set down on a hill overlooking a swelling ocean...
[Clad in protective suits and equipped with instruments for taking samples of rock,
soil and water they stepped out on the windswept hill above the shore...
It was late day, a cold autumn rain was drumming on the shuttles metal hull.
A storm was coming in from the east, ominous clouds gathering out over the sea.
There was a certain alien quality to the light and the color of the sky,
the surrounding landscape a barren, dreary wasteland.
Trying to ignore the feeling of unease they set to their tasks,
walking down to the oceanshore...]
Can this be what we hope for, where to build our future?
Harsh and rugged, unwelcoming, cold, benighted land.
In the midst of this desolation so much greater our loss,
all the beauty that was squandered, oh - our unkind fate!
[Hostile as it seemed the planet was promising in many aspects.
The atmosphere proved to be much like their own, almost breathable.
The oceans consisted of water,
though rich in some elements toxic to them but nonetheless possible to transform
by introducing chemicalproducing bacteria. There was primitive life,
a bluish slime covered the cliffs along the shore,
but not in any form that would cause any trouble to the terraforming processes.
All in all, the expedition proved the planet to be a compatible future host
for the thousands of lifeforms they brought along.
Basically satisfied with what they had learned the team returned to the shuttle,
the thunder of its engines drowning in the storm as they lifted off.]
Terraform - alter the environment - creative power,
this world must bend to our needs, its destiny mould to ours.
Time is on our side, above the sleepers bide.
It will take years, centuries or more, to build the world we lost anew
and though we've come a long way there's far to go, this is the beginning...
And so one day the sleepers waken, fulfilling the glorious dream.
Into the future the path leads on...
