Monument

by Diatessaron

/
00:00
00:00

  • Digital Album

    Album download available in a variety of high quality and lossless formats!

    Buy the whole album (recommended!) and receive a PDF copy of the liner notes and lyrics with original artwork. Additionally, this online version of the album includes a PDF copy of the lyrics with annotations explaining some of the more obscure references and metaphors in the text. We're told it's fun to read while listening!

    Buy Now  $5 CAD  or more

1.
03:56
lyrics
download
2.
06:57
lyrics
download
3.
05:41
lyrics
download
4.
06:22
lyrics
download
5.
12:52
lyrics
download

about

Monument is a rock symphony in five movements dedicated to the victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The music for each movement was composed by a different band-member, a creative approach that results in a wildly varied soundscape across the work as a whole. The lyrics approach the subject of the atomic bomb from a different perspective in each section: that of a statue, a phoenix, a ray of light, a sea creature, and a Japanese legend. At times raw and visceral, at other times stark and serene, the symphony wanders through images of destruction caused by war, narrating each scene through different sets of eyes. It is an ambitious work in the progressive rock genre, aspiring to bridge the gap between a concept album and a classical symphonic tone poem.

credits

released 19 December 2010
Music - Diatessaron
Lyrics - Si Tj
Recording and mixing - Alan Wall @ NRS Productions
Mastering - Jamey Harrow @ HB Media
Cover art - Joerg Kritzer
Design - Si Tj

tags

tags: amplified classical progressive metal progressive rock rock Calgary

license

all rights reserved

feeds

feeds for this album, this artist
Track Name: The Statue
Standing on a hill so lonely
His breath is like the thick fog that shrouds his triumph in misty
Forms resembling ghosts of soldiers who died at his command
Without a care for rhyme or reasonable thought

The flag of nations stands before him drooping in the stagnant air
The battle's won, the yards are gained, he sheds a tear, salutes a prayer

The fields of spring launch bullets through the air and into the night
The maxim fire strobes and dying soldiers' souls take flight
Away from freezing bodies, eyes like glass and memories
Of bright spring fields before they slept among the poppies

He could feel it in his heart
And he could feel it in his soul
He could feel it in his bones
He could hear the bell toll

"Je ne sai pas comment vous dire
Difficult times are coming near
C'est un battaille qu'on n'peut pas suvivre
Write to your wives and send them love,
Reveiller vous de tous vos reves
On marche bientot pour la front"

The fields of spring launch bullets through the air and into the night
The maxim fire strobes and dying soldiers' souls take flight
Away from freezing bodies, eyes like glass and memories
Of bright spring fields before they slept among the poppies

He could feel it in his heart
And he could feel it in his soul
He could feel it in his bones
He could feel it taking hold

A statue stands upon a hill forlorn
Corroded by the years as if to warn
The devil slept within his calloused hands
Awakened by necessity's demands
If only he could see the rainbows forming as the sun streams through the mist behind his solid brassy form

The fields of spring launch bullets through the air and into the night
The maxim fire strobes and dying soldiers' souls take flight
Away from freezing bodies, eyes like glass and memories
Of bright spring fields before they slept among the poppies
Track Name: The Phoenix
Embers burning
Glowing like the furnace of a heart that doesn't want to die
Cinders glowing
Smoking into ephemeral figurines that dance in clouds

Sweet time to build an atom bomb from mem'ries of an Oppenheimer dream
Dissolved in a fire of gifts fit for a king, then reassembled like a warm machine

Ashes smoking
Cooling like a sapphire that has nothing left to say
Charcoal cocoon:
a hope, a glimmer. Something more will come of this

Sweet time to build an atom bomb from mem'ries of an Oppenheimer dream
Dissolved in a fire of gifts fit for a king, then reassembled like a warm machine

Cry, phoenix, cry
So that tears from your eyes
May be tossed from the skies
Where your flames brightly fly
Making soldiers reply
Unto death as they die
That untimely demise
Will not force their goodbyes
As you fall from on high
And your evening is nigh
But by morning you rise
And your living defies
Ends

Look out for me
Watch out for the way my spirit bends
Right behind me,
Are you enemies or are you friends? It depends...
Will you be there for me
To light me with a magnifying lens?

Or will you let me grow old,
Cold with moldy gold
As I cry silently
Like an alarm about to sound

Sweet time to build an atom bomb from mem'ries of an Oppenheimer dream
Dissolved in a fire of gifts fit for a king, then reassembled like a warm machine

Sound up
Sound off
Go up
In flames
Track Name: Prism
Around and around what a perfect sound
Umbrella in the pouring rain
Into the ground it seems you've found
A shelter from the hurricane

Sundrops scattering aimlessly
Out from a crystal concubine
We came united shamelessly
The left from the whorehouse redesigned

Stones to heal the heavens' wounds
Bridges from the Earth to sky
The promise of a God festooned
In seven colors from on high

Do you even know who we are
A brilliant schizophrenia
Descended from the warmest star
With speed approaching mania
Narrow as we seem to be
When to your eyes we first did come
The form that we took naturally
Would soon disperse to widened spectrums

Scattered from a prism lonely
Refracted by the pale cloak of mist behind a brass statue
Projected into air like a colorful refrain
Composed for choirs of sunshine
Singing at the speed of light

I was walking by myself
And I couldn't find a way to keep from falling
Going into this I felt
Like a million different waves to break upon you

A million now for all
No longer kept a secret from the world intrinsically
A rainbow to enthrall
And to guide my tired world away from unreality

Do you even know who I am
A brilliant schizophrenia
From Helios I quickly swam
With speed approaching mania
Narrow as I seemed to be
When to your eyes I first did come
The form that I took naturally
Would soon disperse to widened spectrums

Solid glass has split my face
Revealing things inside of me
My unity has been erased
Thanks to my strange duality

Stones to heal the heavens' wounds
Bridges from the Earth to sky
The promise of a God festooned
In seven colors from on high

It seems that we were not immune
Our purity has gone awry
A prism split us, now we're strewn
I knew who we were, who am I?
Track Name: Galactic Jellyfish
Les etoiles sont un nuage de mille soleilles
A thousand eyes to look upon the night and day
Et chaque etoile brille come un savant
And watches a birth upon the earth, a child gone astray

My spiral arms are nothing like your own
Which twinkle with the light of many stars
Like distant mem'ries strewn across a void
Nurtured by the years until they've grown
Then like as many gunshots leave their scars
Upon that empty home they once enjoyed

Test the fire
And burn it on the road to evermore
It's coming through, it's coming through and I
Test the fire
And burn it on the road to evermore
It's coming through, it's coming through and I
Test the fire
And burn it on the road...

The light
It cries
And twists
A thousand suns
The world
It burns
And dies
Sound on
Sound off
And sound
A thousand times
Go up
In flames
And GO!

Your spiral arms are not alike to mine
Which drift about in winds of undertow
And bring to me whatever I desire
Beneath the moon for which I'm named they shine
Illuminated silverly they glow
As if within them burns a silver fire

Cry if the wisdom of a thousand suns
Were to burst at once into the sky
Then that would be like the splendor of the mighty one
A cloud (and I wish that you could hear me)
Bearing my shape (and I wish that you could see me)
Topples (and I wish that you could feel me)
Towards a terrified sky
Track Name: Senbazuru
Hey now so wait for I

Liken it unto a little boy
Ninety-two in father sky
Liken it unto a fat man
Who ate the god of those who die

From paper
From out of fire
They move in ashen colors
A stone will
Awake the watcher
If he should tire of duty

Now there were
So many others
Now there was time to fold them
Each of them
Those many others
Each of them hangs in a cool and glowing breeze

Skyline, high-line, higher than my line
Einstein in a prime-time timeline
With his face drippin' over a clothes-dry line
Like a fish at the end of a nylon line
The fine line shines like a benign line
Reminding my mind to find a kind kind of crime
Designed to decline like a spine intertwined with mankind
Blind to the divine defined line

A thousand souls to light a fire
A thousand fires to light the world
And from each fire, for the world, a monument:
A thousand paper cranes

And the son was the father
And the father was the son
And if the stars were a cloud of eyes
Then they would see what had been done
They would know their little brothers
The implosion and the gun
And they would turn their gaze so far away from here
To a place much farther than the sun

Now there were
So many others
Now there was time to love them
Each of them
Those many others
Each of them hangs in a cool and glowing breeze, in a cool and glowing breeze

From fire
From out of paper
They move in anguished colors
If stones could
Awake the watchers
When they cry and die so high up in the sky

Freedom! Freedom!
Element'ry marriage of alike sets helps the divorce of another pair
Over in the corner of a dangerous swan
Could it be? Could it be? Is it all undone?
Relapse! Relapse!
Testimony -- Phillips, is it time yet?
Take a new -- cut me -- harpoon
Underneath the -- listen to it, everything they say:
"New world! New world out of yesterday"

Breathe soft and wait for me
Stand light, or could it be?
Run, faster!
Breathe hard and run away
Stand bright in disarray
Die with me

Senbazuru

Liken it unto a little boy
Ninety-two in father sky
Liken it unto a fat man
Who ate the god of those who die
Hey now so wait for I
Stay now

Silence
Nowhere
Knows its
Place there
Sounding on and on and echo on

In memoriam mundus

Out of, out of grace, of grace I
Dwelling, dwelling deep within you
Destroy darkness born of hatred
With the, with the shining lamp of
Shining lamp of knowledge

Sweet time to build an atom bomb from mem'ries of an Oppenheimer dream
Dissolved in a fire of gifts fit for a king, then reassembled like a warm machine
Sweet time to build an atom bomb from mem'ries of an Oppenheimer dream…