Nile Von Unaussprechlichen Kulten Lyrics:
[Music and lyrics by Karl Sanders]

I Hath Dreamed Black and Grim, Desolate Visions Of
the Pre-Human Serpent Folk and Communed with
Long-dead Reptiles. Silently Watching Through the
Ages in Cold, Curious Apathy. The Unending Sorrows
and Suffering of an Abysmal Humankind.

I Dare Not Again Surrender to the Deep Sleep Which
Ever Beckons Me. Lest I in Dread. Shudder at the
Nameless Things. That May at this Very Moment. Be
Crawling and Lurking. At the Slimy Edges of My
Conciousness. Slithering Forth from the Bowels of
Their Infernal Pits. Worshipping Their Ancient
Stone Idols and Carving Their Own Detestable
Likenesses On Subterranean Obelisks of
Blood-soaked Granite.

[Guitar solo]

I Await the Day When the Claws of Doom Shall Rise.
To Drag Down in Their Reeking Talons the Weary and
Hopeless Remnants of a Jaded, Decayed,
War-despairing Mankind. Of a Day When the Earth
Shall Open Wide and the Black, Bottomless, Yawning
Abyss Engulfs the Arrogant Civilizations of Man.
Chthonic Retribution Shall Ascend. Amidst
Universal Pandemonium and Those Who Slither and
Crawl Shall Rise Again Once More to Inherit the
Earth.

[H.P. Lovecraft was one of the most influential
authors or horror stories of the last century. The
last few decades have seen Lovecraft's rise from a
forgotten author of phantasmagoric pulp magazine
fiction to a subject of serious academic study. (A
second major biography has recently appeared.)

Lovecraft's influence on other writers in the
horror genre has been significant. His writing is
considered to be seminal, and it still exerts a
powerful influence on artists and film makers. A
distinctive feature of Lovecraft's ficton that
sets it apart from that of many writers in the
genre is his construction, as he wrote, of a
"background of consistent and elaborate
pseudo-myth". Thus, his invention of the
ultimate grimoire - the Necronomicon - was an
important part of his fictional modus operandi.

Lovecraft first referred to the Necronomicon in
1922 in his short story "The Hound".
("The Hound" was later collected in the
volume Dagon and Other Macabre Tales, which was
published by Arkham House in 1965.) He would refer
to the Necronomicon in several other stories. A
circle of writers who were friends and
correspondents with Lovecraft also started
referring to the Necronomicon in their horror
tales, which in turn solidified its
"existence". The fact that they would
refer to the Necronomicon along with actual books
dealing with witchcraft and demonology helped to
sell the illusion. Inspired by Lovecraft's lead,
this literary "circle" also invented
arcane and "forbidden" texts: Clark
Ashton Smith's The Book of Eibon, Robert E.
Howard's Unaussprechlichen Kulten and Robert
Bloch's Cultes de Goules and De Vermis Mysteriis
were all forbidden books invented to add further
depth to their spine-tingling tales of horror. The
"Lovecraft Circle's" practice of
inventing "forbidden books" is very well
documented. Not only did they "invent"
such books, they even went to great lengths to
create bogus histories, which only added to the
illusion of their existence.

Robert E. Howard first introduced Nameless Cults
through his story "The Children of the
Night" (1931). In 1932, Lovecraft came up
with a German title for it - Ungenennte
Heidenthume. Several of Lovecraft's correspondents
balked at this unwieldy title. August Derleth came
up with the title Unaussprechlichen Kulten, which
stuck, despite the fact that this more literally
[ Find more Lyrics on http://mp3lyrics.org/BHGW ]
means "Unpronounceable Cults": "Die
Unaussprechlichen Kulten" or
"Unaussprechliche Kulten" would be more
correct. The reason for this debate amongst the
circle of authors is clear - the German is
technically incorrect. The adjective would end in
-e for the indefinite plural, not an -n, to with:
Unaussprechliche Kulte... If we wish to accept
"Nameless Cults" as being the correct
wording for an English translation, we would have
to accept "Von Unaussprechlichen Kulten"
as being the realm German title of the work. The
addition of the "Von" also allows us to
keep the -n ending (perhaps even more appropriate
would have been "Die Namenlosen Kulte").
In any case, although Lovecraft doesn't mention
this forbidden text any more than he does others,
but he does give its publication
"history" in the story "Out of the
Aeons":

"... a glance at the hieroglyphs by any
reader of von Junzt's horrible Nameless Cults
would have established a linkage of unmistakable
significance. At this period, however, the readers
of that monstrous blasphemy were exceedingly few;
copies having been incredible scarce in the
interval between the suppression of the original
Düsseldorf edition (1839) and of the Bridewell
translation (1845) and the publication of the
expurgates reprint by the Golden Goblin Press in
1909."

According to surviving correspondence from Robert
Howard to Lovecraft:

"1839: Unaussprechlichen Kulten was published
in Düsseldorf. Written by Friedrich von Junzt
[read Necronomicon in Greek translation] . Von
Junzt dies six months after returning from trip to
Mongolia while working on second book. Less than a
dozen copies exist of this edition. Von Junzt
relates many stories of the survivals of cults
worshipping pre-human entities or prehistoric
gods, such as Ghatanothoa, Bran, and others. The
principle obscurity of this book is in Von Junzt's
use of the term "keys" - phrase used
many times by him, in various relations, such as
descriptions of the infamous Black Stone in
Hungary and the legendary Temple of the Toad in
Honduras."

Now, where all this dusty old literary shenanigans
takes a more Nile-relevant turn of events... As I
was working on this song "Unaussprechlichen
Kulten" and driving myself nuts trying to
figure out whether to stick with the original
Lovecraft variant of the title or the more correct
linguistic one, I got a call from Orion Landau
(Relapse's resident graphics genius).

Orion, at the time was working on the cover for my
"Saurian Meditation" side project. He
contacted me for a quote that he could use for the
CD layout relating to the album's theme. I was
compelled to reply, "Oh, yeah sure" (as
if there was some book on my shelf ready-made with
authentic quotes concerning reptilian meditative
states), but on the other end of the phone sat
stark silence. In that pregnant moment of silence,
a thunderbolt struck me, as I had, of course, been
working on the Nile song gathering as much
information that I could find on the much-vaunted
"Unaussprechlichen Kulten". I laughed,
and said, "What the heck. Sure, I'll send a
quote over. No problem." So, with
Lovecraftian invention, I fashioned a fictitious
quote (from the fictitious Von Junzt) from his
fictitious Unaussprechlichen Kulten.

It worked so well that I went ahead and blew it up
into a full-blown song. After "Saurian
Meditation" came out, I got a rash of e-mails
wanting to know where they could obtain a copy of
Unaussprechlichen Kulten, as they had, of course,
been unable to locate any of the supposedly
existing copies. Try as I might to convince these
insistent folks of the truth, they were steadfast
in the conviction that the quotes were indeed
authentic. Although I denied owning any such book,
in their minds I was merely lying to them. They
thought I was keeping the dreaded,
"legendary" tome to myself. One of them,
an obviously bright and thoroughly versed literary
student from East Germany (who I will respectfully
name here only as "Torsten"), was
adamant on the subject, as he had managed to find
an empty catalog reference (with the volume long
missing from a library shelf in Prague) to an
unrelated work by a German author of the same
period (Hamburg, 1837) with a very similar name,
Frederick von Juntz. In my mind, this coincidence
only underscores the incredible, timeless power of
H.P. Lovecraft's works, and the ingenious way his
fantastic stories continue to exert their
mysterious, otherworldly power.]
Lyrics: Von Unaussprechlichen Kulten, Nile [end]