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The Agent That Shapes The Desert

by Virus

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1.
The agent that shapes the desert, you’re a well of dense fluids From the basin of time, you have derived from the lakes you’ve left behind The boundless celestial season drags the sands of time In between your flecks of sparks, a constellation of departed stars A day in the life of the agent One blink of the eye, pre-creation From the catacombs where our dead rivers run the constant red glows bright A thousand arms point to the sun, the sky picked clean and white Into the bestial season, the angry animals are all in sight Just fiercely rotating, roaring inbetween their specks of light A day in the life of the agent One blink of the eye, pre-creation Analyzing eyes howl, you watch the ashes engulf the sky Known pulses hits the air, behind a veil, your breath, you sneer The radiant tunnels stashed, now grasp the atmosphere Washed away towards the tides, and chased down towards the spine
2.
Slow and accurate over the fields where the first fossils were formed The pendulum sways like a dead arm I hear you here, resonating from your shine Blazing in the veins of the sun you are viewing the great world The visuals of your sounds resound throughout all our known abysses And floats around in the magma chambers Toils with what’s forgotten as all our craters are formed The slowest (there is), the continents drifting underneath the crusts of our deserts
3.
Chromium Sun 04:20
I’ve shovelled through dust to find you To the point I heard the sound of your mind Memories displayed a secret gallery Cargo on an unmanned freight-train You tell me the earth is a womb Forging fake centuries Plugging the entrance to a new world Thriving in the realm of your chest A chromium sun gleams in your eyes Like a hatched-out horizon it bleaches the skies The glowing behemoth came back from somewhere And its chromium chest it breathes Your skin is a barrier to another world Centuries gone, just came back Music in a silent universe Ancient echoes from pre-historic birds The desert monument stuttered “Real and dry, hurt and scrape” The hollow moment, battered Is now wiped clean from the sky The chromium sun gives a strict glare Sliding on your limbs, overriding your sphere The hatched-out horizon came back from nowhere On its chromium hands and knees
4.
The wrath of old rocks placed upon the ridges Bastions of the universe Never fully spent the sediments has taken them The cold and damp has returned Hear the thighless mother in her inverted travail Her shrieks float in the infinite blue As the stars treat how volcanoes are born in the distorted red From the slow slopes and in the early winds it echoes from all around
5.
6.
Dancing on the surface of my eyes the acoustics of the sands The swarming song inside the heat of the breath of dead sleep That rocks the empty boats tied up to the barren shores and pounded by crumbling forts I’ve found the dead cities of Syria lost in the sands The grains of ghosts and traces of (various) apocalypses and of men never born Smouldered, harassed and bothered where they stood, angelically, shoulder to shoulder In solitary landscapes empty men watches Delicate pigments of gone silhouettes There was life here before the sands swept through the waters and replaced the rapids and sung and howled in between the houses
7.
The flares of life, the torches The things to see when you slip into reason The flares are there, dancing in the corner Subtle reminders And you see now that all around you is dancing silently as if to be discreet As if life was all a discreet landscape just dancing subtly around you In the flame or where it resides Next to the spent candle Little containers, shrubs in your garden Just light them and see They have a way of showing you what you were missing They seem eternal to me You need a light to see in the dark Here they come to life Come to you little flowers of the dark Little flames in an hourglass travelling towards death Like us, they move down showing their descent to the eyes they have illuminated to the eyes they have illuminated
8.
Prophets call across burnt dunes your name spells rusted carnival tunes The sand hides hives of nested wombs where fossils used to gallop Watchers of the morning sift Shifting ripples eye the world where silence is knowledge and creation is consumed in infinite truth What sound would I make here Would we be us when there is nothing left? When minerals dry and turn to dust the grains will form new ancient artworks and the wind will roll up and down the dawn Choirs of drifting trials – denials of the great fires that drew the gravel into his veins He’s the far away hills that swim into manes of silt Strap your thoughts to this engine that rears itself skyward as the nimbus numbs itself to desire Can we live with this sadness that only rots inwards Old rope that rows against the current Twisted with the years
9.
Casual is the presence of the sounds that trained their ears to shield themselves in the deserts from the cross-winds eternally seeking them out in vacant places and through the clockwork of ancient remains - that rests on the ocean floor - pulling the strings from the shadows On the sites where they flogged the elephants and handled their bones… Those fields are all scarred Centuries howl in the last gleam in their eyes Significant dreams reveals despise - that rests on the ocean floor - pulling the strings from the shadows Red currents move their tusks and their bones Under the light of the ageing sun Weaker with every contortion As they wander through the desert plains sizing up the universe from the solar winds to this pleasant breeze They’re drinking the first waters as the islands are rising up from the seas

about

The Agent That Shapes The Desert is the third album from Norwegian avantgarde rock maestros VIRUS. Its title and lyrical themes reflect the red desert sands on the cover as well as the shifts of the various lifeforms and elements of a planet headed for extinction. Observing the forces of nature, in contrast to their previous outing The Black Flux, which pictured the end of the world on a more psychological level. Whereas The Black Flux was a dense maelstrom that threatened to pull you under, The Agent... is dry, sharp and refined. It combines the dissonant guitar-washes of mastermind Czral's former band VED BUENS ENDE and The Black Flux with the outlandish nature of the band's Carheart debut, while simultaneously moving in several new directions at once. At the same time, The Agent... is the band's most coherent, catchy and well-produced effort yet, and should appeal to music addicts across a vast spectrum of genres. Czral's trademark sideways riffs are perfectly underscored by the concise, efficient drumming of Einz and Bjeima's adventurous bass lines. The vocals, also courtesy of Czral, are stronger than ever, at times reminiscent of a choir of mad preachers, at others subtle and brooding, giving off an air of desperation.

credits

released February 14, 2011

Produced by Virus and Bård Ingebrigtsen
Recorded at Amper Tone, October ’09 - August ’10
Mastered at Strype Audio by Tom Kvålsvoll
Cover art by Eliran Kantor

Virus are:
Czral Michael - vocals, guitars
Einar ‘Einz’ Sjursø - drums

Guests:
Bjeima - bass
Kris Rygg - vocals on Call Of The Tuskers
Bård Ingebrigtsen - violin, baritone guitar, piano
Kjartan Kristiansen - slide guitar on Where The Flame Resides

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Virus Oslo, Norway

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