Fall of Efrafa
Inlé

"These throws of rapture, kindly hands caress broken bones, hands that cut through parched soul like a sharpened stone. What is it that we leave in these fitting moments? Sentiment? These curtains fall and wrap us up in our rigor mortis, the nimble fingers of the black one, his majesty of cold, courting me into sweet abeyance. The malign steely touch of needle thorns massing and directing their gaze on my misfiring neurons. The vestiges of my sickening life, of my loves, my crowning glories, the pain and poetry of a spent existence. He coils up inside me now, kissing me and whispering sweet nothings. The words of release, the words I crave as I lose all, as the clotted mass of cumuli nimbus bows his head in salute. As I claw upwards, as I fall back into oblivion and his words speak out amongst the frightening turbulence, those final fleeting words I coax from his abhorrent throat. "Will you join my owsla?"

Here we are. The circle is finally closed. It is not an end, but the signal that we are ready to start again. Inlé is the personification of death. The sunset. The black rabbit of Inlé does not exist without Frith.

The trilogy is not linear but cyclic; indeed, one could say it starts from the end. From death, or rather from the conversation with death. The head of the rebellious Owsla (or Ausla in Italian) and Inlé, the black rabbit whom no one will ever be able to oppose. It is "Fu Inlé", an expression meaning sunset in Richard Adams' masterpiece, here signifies legacy, a legacy as heavy as a boulder of the one who first dreamed of the end of every form of slavery.

Funereal arpeggios, solemn atmospheres, titanic cadences where the Crust component has now dissolved, leaving room for a sound flow of an indescribable sincerity and intensity. Descriptions no longer suffice; the narrative dimension speaks, it is the one giving life to a flow of blackened but ritual notes:

"Synapses fray,
my form now vivid,
as torpor sets and blood grows tepid.
With every ounce of flesh now offered,
I hold your corpse within my coffers.
Knitted cells now split asunder,
stand alongside me brother.
Take your place amongst my Owsla,
we march at dawn now and forever.
Cross your palms and acquiesce,
take a bow as they ascend.
Scent these grounds with your presence,
ring the change of days now done."

Frith is power, the demon of totalitarianism, the specter that must crumble before our eyes. "Republic Of Heaven" is the wind of change that overwhelms, the mind that breaks the chains it was bound in, that returns to being.The death of the despot does not provoke remorse, the sunset of patriarchy gives us a strength we did not even imagine we had, we raise our faces dirty with mud and look forward. The king is dead.

"The king is dead!
The king is dead!
We bound his face!
Cut off his head!
We spit at thee,
We curse at thee,
The king is dead!
Brothers and sisters,
The king is dead!
Cut him down,
Flay his skin,
Our god is dead![...]

Our nascent republic,

To this reform! "

The time for burial arrives. The world is about to change. Only oppression has been given to us by the theocratic rule, only death do we see reflected in the terrifying Efrafa. But now we must destroy the symbols of oppression, replace them. Frith is dead. Vulneraria is dead. We are alive.

The suspended sky overlooks an Ausla now without a master, disorientation is great, but the regained freedom creates a comfort greater than the fear of the new world, some, the weakest, still call for the old sovereigns. The Efrafa are approaching. The true rebellion has just begun.

"The Warren of Snares", the labyrinth of snares, is not only the name of the last track written by Fall of Efrafa, it is not only the name given to their entire trilogy, it is the metaphor of life's precarious balance: continuing to persist in our arrogant ruling, we do nothing but create traps for ourselves, be these climate change, overpopulation, or blind faith in medieval religious teachings. We place these snares everywhere, only to trample them in a future time, dying by our own hand. In front of the Efrafa, the rabbits see their hopes annihilated and in their final hour have no choice but to take up arms and fight the power. Tyranny will perish and equality will no longer be a privilege.

The circle finally closes, with a grand finale, of gigantic proportions. A wind so strong as to finally cause the firmament to crumble. The last cry of a desperate world, marking its rebirth.

"The weakening words spread out in ares,
the urge to flee,
cowardice engulfs.
Our hands are raised in unison.
Brandished tools,
branded skin.
Cut away,
like so much meat,
we forged new scars against ill repute,
we hold on tight to one another.
I AM LEGION FOR WE ARE MANY!"