Dark Fortress - Wraith

A specter writhes
Too faint for mortal eyes
A mere ululation

A deathless witness
Lurid in demise
Spawned from pain and tribulation

Unsound
Undead

Evanescing
An orphaned want, marooned
In disembodied mayhem, howling

Just a shadow
Waning with the moon
Ever yearning, ever prowling

Doomed to linger, a wraith in a withered world
You will never sleep again
Lifeless eyes, forever haunted by the void
Gaze upon the tomb of man

Cold and dried up
The ravaged plains lie dead
Buried ruins sing of the end

Faces fade away
Frozen in convulsion
In broken temples, gods quietly die

And gales roam unrestrained
Lick the horror from revulsion
Beneath the weeping scars in the sky

Doomed to linger, a wraith in a withered world
You will never sleep again
Lifeless eyes, forever haunted by the void
Gaze upon the tomb of man

Cold and dried up
The ravaged plains lie dead
Buried ruins sing of the end

Dark Fortress is a black metal band hailing from Germany.  The above song appears on their 6th studio album, "Ylem." Mortal provided the vocals for this song.  This song, and the album as whole, represents a bit of a departure from their earlier efforts, which were more in line with standard black metal fare.  This particular song features clean vocals throughout (ironically considered blasphemy in black metal) and a very melodic structure.

My initial thoughts turn to Ondine's Curse.  This isn't about the medical condition, but the mythology behind it.  In European folklore, Ondine was a water nymph who fell in love with a mortal man.  Upon being spurned by him, she cursed him so that he would need to think about every breath he took for the rest of his life, meaning that if he slept, he would die.  "Doomed to linger, a wraith in a withered world," the refrain, is of course, the catalyst of that thought.

The rest of the world can quickly darken to one who knows their own death is imminent.  They begin to question the point of everything else going on around them.  Sometimes they take life (as a whole) far beyond to what could be a perfectly logical conclusion - that all human life is going to die, whether through intrinsic gradualism or external catastrophe.  Everything in my view of the song revolves around the refrain, especially the line, "you will never sleep again."

It's easy to dismiss these lyrics as standard black metal fare, especially given that a lot of past songs dealt with apocalyptic visions.  This song, however, has enough ambiguity that one could simply divine superficial meaning, as I just noted, or give it a deeper meaning, such as what people are doing to the planet, etc.  Dark Fortress, at least on this album, does not go over-the-top with the whole Satan My Master shtick common with other black metal bands.  "Ylem," lyrically, seems concerned more with the pagan culture of their homeland, and what they see as an extermination of it.  In this way one could see Ondine as the index of their homeland, being spurned by its people, and that one day she will deliver unto them the same curse that befell her mortal lover.

Whatever meaning you ascribe to these lyrics (feel free to do so in the comments), sometimes it's just nice to enjoy the haunting emotions put forth by the song, both lyrically and musically.