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Rating: This preamble comes after I had already written the review, but I absolutely need to add it when I listened to the album, metaphorically speaking, two days ago and today at lunchtime I was walking in Prague towards Anděl, a lively district and an astonishing hotspot, and I hear from afar a sound I instantly recognize that attracts me like the Pied Piper and makes me forget all the fine people parading around me: in the square a young street musician was playing, and quite well, Sleep's Dragonaut. I salute Julian from Moldova with a 50-crown coin for that moment of joyous chaos which contrasted with the madness of this crazy world and we chat a bit together. I think that in 1992, when I bought the just-released album, he wasn't even born yet... Anyway, let's begin:
It is the psychic noise of the surprise of those attacked at the sight of Hannibal's elephants.
It is the clash of Attila's Huns against the Franks at the Catalaunian Plains.
It is the air of chess pieces moved in a game between Cesare Borgia and Leonardo Da Vinci.
It is the dismay of Mehmed II upon seeing in front of the Wallachian capital 25,000 impaled as a welcome from Vlad Tepes.
It is the shrug, along with an "oh well", of Julius Caesar before heading toward his fate that March.
It is Aguirre-Kinski's wrath of God in the final scene of Herzog's film.
It is Saint Lawrence on the grill urging his executioners to turn him over because he was already cooked on that side.
It is the tale of the splatter brawl with centaurs in the twelfth book of Ovid's Metamorphoses.
It is the clangor of Macedonian shields closing in phalanx.
It is Theseus' dilated pupil at the moment he kills the Minotaur.
It is the silence of Ulysses and his men inside the Trojan horse.
It is Medusa's rattle tail making petrification tarantellas.
It is the hiss of Alexander the Great's sword slicing the Gordian knot.
It is the wonder of the crash of the Colossus of Rhodes brought down by a tsunami unleashed by the wrath of the gods.
It is the heavy puff escaping from the dilated nostrils of horses in battle sculpted by Phidias on the Parthenon's metopes.
It is the scent of roses that envelops the Turks when at the end of May 1453 they enter as conquerors into Constantinople and that within seconds transforms into the metallic scent of spilled plasma.
It is Maradona crossing his arms over his chest and rolling his eyes to the sky in the moment of ecstasy realizing he had been Saint Januarius.
It is lava that inexorably advances and covers everything.
As ancient as they are, Chris Hakius, Matt Pike, and Al Cisneros in their crackling ecstasy draw from the collective consciousness ancestral memories transforming into sound passages of Eternity erupting an essential unrepeatable epic that traces a pre-Atlantean doom where flashes of deluges and comets illuminate the sky of millenary "heaviness". Kneel in silent reverence before this monolith and don't break the balls that "The Druid Sleeps In Meditation!"
Eternity is "noisy"...
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Dragonaut (05:43)
Ride the dragon toward the crimson eye
Flap the wings under Mars red sky
The reptile pushes itself out into space
Leaving behind, the human race
Swim inside the solar seas
The Nebula cries out to me
Passing where I've gone before
I fly through the crimson door
Ride the dragon toward the crimson eye
Flap the wings under Mars red sky
02 The Druid (04:52)
Far within the oaken tower
Exists the one with evil power
Magic channeler of earth's frustration
The Druid sleeps in meditation
03 Evil Gypsy / Solomon's Theme (07:06)
Insect caravan pulls its way
Through the freezing and misty haze
Gypsy casts a spell of frost
Frozen solid our lives are paused
Glass village lies below
Castle of sleet with magic glow
Trapped inside icy glaze
The burning sunlight sheds its rays
Escape the tomb of deadly freeze
To the village of glass we have the keys
Ice people everywhere once inside
At home again the insects ride
05 Aquarian (05:37)
Trapped inside a world under leagues of ocean
The clergy arrives with the magic potion
I put my mouth into the cup of potion
Sip down the nectar and escape the ocean
Reaching for the sun, leave Atlantis, escape the sea
Fly into the sky, leave behind Atlantean key
Reaching for the sun, leave Atlantis, escape the sea
Fly into the sky, leave behind Atlantean key
Escape the sea with ascending motion
I touch the sun and return to ocean
06 Holy Mountain (08:44)
Slumber killed by rays of the new red sun arising
Dreamer wakens to spectral gaze of light rays shining
Black steed carries him across the astral sand
Rides alone is the man from the magic caravan
I believe the signs of the reptile master
Sunbound spacepod rising faster
Earth drenched in black under starless sky above
Man on the mountain sets free the holy dove
Look onto the rays of the new stoner sun rising
Sonic Titan rides out on clouds of new horizon
Look onto the rays of the new stoner sun rising
Sonic Titan rides out on clouds of new horizon
07 Inside the Sun (05:44)
Travelling toward the atomic sky
Passing through the wall of light we fly
To the center of the sun we go
Discovering secrets no one else has known
Within the center of the galaxy
Away from Earth and all its misery
Travelling toward the atomic sky
Passing through the wall of light we fly
Toward the center of the sun we go
Discovering secrets no one else has known
Within the center of the galaxy
Away from Earth and all its misery
Pressing on into the burning sky
Burning spaceship it's time to die
Our ship explodes
Our work is done
We've left our lives
Inside the sun
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