Get all 12 Anna Pest releases available on Bandcamp and save 40%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Catgirl in the House of Evil (...and Other Stories), Snow, A Moor Beneath the Cold Dead Sun, Dark Arms Reach Skyward With Bone White Fingers, Swordmaiden, The Ocean Calls Me Home, Something Is a Foot, A Fortress of Flesh, and 4 more.
1. |
Nadira
04:24
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Blood
It smells like blood
It smells like fucking blood
In here
Warm flesh and cold fluorescents
Tangled wires and dangling drip bags
Fire-red hair in the blue light
In the blue light
These shrivelled, sweatsoaked sheets
Slumped over the mattress edge
A Siberian divide
And these fingers
These clammy, feeble fingers
Wriggling frantically in the dark
O these fingers
These wretched little fingers
They tremble before you
Say something
Say anything
Our hope is fragile
And we cling to it
Like filthy bedsheets
Like the last brittle leaves of winter
Thrashed about in the frost
Like the pages of an open book
Clutched to your chest
Even as they tear and fall away
Dark arms reach skyward
With bone white fingers
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2. |
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She was the vessel of the sun
A radiant blaze aglow
Extinguished before her time
Ephemeral, ineffable
Reduced to flotsam, jetsam
On a placid amber sea
An anchor half-buried in sand
The sole relic of her precious hull
I was never meant
To walk this earth alone
Can this wounded dog
Be taught to love
When he cannot even
Lick his own wounds?
Can this decrepit hull
Moor beneath the crags
Amidst such a tempest?
Again
Waves break and swell
With salt and spray
As we fornicate
The pain at bay
Sachiel marching ever closer
Mutilated Magdalene
Lain bloody on the stone
Unworthy bastard Nazarene
On a cross of steel and bone
Iscariot?
A jackal’s lips
A serpent’s eyes
Icarus?
Such fragile wings
Never meant to fly
O my worthless son
This burden falls upon you
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3. |
Thundering Angel
01:23
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Angel of myriad faces
Dressed in the shards of the sky
Celestial image reflecting
A rapturous, harrowing cry
Singular purpose unyielding
To hollow this unhallowed earth
Bear witness to my torrid gaze
Through a steel bath of boiling ichor
Boiled alive in a cage
O ye who dare to look on me
Darkness envelopes the landscape
At the sole behest
Of a piercing bolt of light
Plunged straight through my chest
Tear the night with shattered glass
Stone to liquid, wood to ash
My rage
Will rend
The mountain
Vanquish
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4. |
Skyward (ft. d.are)
03:40
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We squander our waking hours
In a modicum of narrow spaces
Eyes distend in bleaching light
Restless limbs slowly atrophy
Between digging holes
To bury ourselves inside
Horizon of a mausoleum
I want to taste the sky
Oh, you want a coffin now?
So content to rot beneath the ground
With your heart in your stomach?
Well, I differ
I’ve felt this way since 1993
And I’m fucking not dead
Slave posture
Lay down your pick and spade
Tell me you’re not sick of
Waiting for a miracle
To save us all
Turn the page; enough
Let’s write a new story
Through the rage and love
The blood and glory
From the earth to the sky
We’ll make our wayward way
And beat down every foe in our way
And we’ll climb their spires
Raising our fists skyward
We will light our fires again
And let our eyes shine brighter
Though the fates conspire
Ever young the night is
Here for you and I, my friend
We’ll make it to the end
Broken hearts and empty wishes
Bloodstained sands in petrol deserts
Burning hands give baleful summons
Watered lungs and blood-filled stomachs
Wake me up; I’m not dreaming
Wake her up, she’s not breathing
Gouge them out if you
Would rather be blind
Meantime, let the colour
Of the sky turn sanguine
As the sties rot out
Would you rather be dead?
Talking heads crowning our empires
Turn a blind eye
As the world advances into fire
This body is a platter
Unfit for the worms
Little walking corpse
Waiting to die in a tempest
Of blood and iron
Alive, I found myself
Eyes locked to the sky and covered in swill
In the barrens where salt and fire clash
Embalmed in melaena
I could do nothing but brace my hands
As rock bottom gave way to a freefall
But we’ll climb their spires
Raising our fists skyward
We will light our fires again
And let our eyes shine brighter
Though the fates conspire
Ever young the night is
Here for you and I, my friend
We’ll make it through to the end
And through the rage and love
We’ll make it to the end
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5. |
A Whisper in the Rain
03:05
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Like a whisper in the rain
I went my solitary way
To sleep under neon stars
To taste the mountain air
To venture onward unremitting
And forget the world
The melody repeats
The notes blend together
To wash my havocked mind
But a dissonance remains
And the earth moved
And the red sky opened
And the smell of blood
The cold touch of metal
The words that you spoke
And the thousands that you could not
Will haunt me forever
A judgment in the eyes of dawn
And I cannot look away
Though I wish it more than anything
A whisper in the rain
A cry through the windswept streets
The eaves sigh with the weight
A storm comes
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6. |
Heavy Lie the Mountains
03:06
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“Mountains; heavy lie the mountains
But they are ever changing
With the passage of time”
Sky, sky of blue
What your eyes can see
And what your eyes cannot
Sky, sky of red
Smell of blood
A bloodless womanhood
A second coming
This is not the first time
My life, my heart, my thoughts
This soul and this vessel are mine
But who am I?
I stand in the cold crimson light
A pale procession staring straight forth
A hundred faces just like mine
And I don’t recognize a one
A language I was never taught to speak
A burden you were never meant to carry
Heavy lie the mountains
Heavy lies the empty space
That hangs between us
Here tonight
Awareness dawns
Of someone who is not me
Who are you?
Who am I now
And who are you?
Who are you?
I don’t know who you are
All I know is I want to
Hold your hand once more
A touch bitter
But still warm
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7. |
Pathetic Consummation
01:48
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A serenade sung
With a souring note of pity
And the sexless cadence
Of tumbling bones
“I’m ready for you”
I take your poison into me
Administered with the erratic rhythm
Of raindrops on the rusted windowsill
Of the fractured light
That floods through these
Shaking, mangled blinds
Sticking palms
And reluctant flesh
In this fetid cell
Where dreams have died
And slowly rot
A pathetic consummation
An egregious desecration
A repugnant copulation
My shameful concession
To your salacious affront
Execrable transgression
I would scrape every bit of flesh
That your prick touched with a knife
Out of my fucking cunt
May you live forever
And suffer
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8. |
Swordmaiden
02:27
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This, my sanguinary rapture
Dragged to the sky to rain down as blood
The heart of Gaia is bedevilled
With a slow decay
Her porous flesh seeps
With a new strain of filth and dreg
A breed of vermin with a craving to eradicate
The subjugated without compunction
Blood and fire bathing the earth entire
Rape and murder; foundations of our empire
Burn it down
A yonic anointing
Of the sword to carve my name
Into the flesh of the myriad
Fascists, sophists, chauvinists
Traitors, beraters, grovellers
Centrists, skeptics
Advocates of devils?
See how they reward your service
Let heads of monarchs
Crown our parapets
Let tongues of sophists
Fall from arrogance aground
They’ll find you dead
Slumped in the cul-de-sac
Your severed head sat in your lap
With offal dripping
Out from your front
And lower back
I drag my blade
From trachea to glans
Perineum to splenius capitis
Flesh giveth way
As tides to the prophet’s hands
Let entrails rain from the precipice
Restoring balance
Through fleshcraft and bloodshed
Justice from stasis
Corruption to carnage
Defenestrate the carcasses
Excoriate the artifice
A splatter on the asphalt proclaimeth
“My work is done”
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9. |
Ambivalence
03:34
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I can feel your spine break
In my hands
A circus of serpents encircle
And speak in their tongues
They tell us we’ll all drown as one
We will all drown as one
Their coils bite deep into
The flesh of our throats
As we sink to the bottom
And they all stay afloat
A frigid justice administered
By his will and command
A bloodthirsty sentence
Carried out through my hands
Iron jaws clamp down
As I take the knife
In these shaking hands of mine
And my empty eyes
Watch as I take your life
Blood on my hands
On these filthy hands of mine
I can’t breathe
If I could turn back time
If I could save your life
If I could walk away right now
If I could turn back time
Know that I would die for this
For I have lost my way
Father, why have you led me astray?
Bash every filthy thought out of my brain
I’ve lost my way
He would ask of me murder
To without remorse or thought
Spill this guiltless blood
Mother, father, I will not
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10. |
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O arm of god, I tear your flesh like paper
I pry your ribcage open with my bare hands
With these gore-caked fangs, I devour all
Muscle, cartilage, bone; it matters not
Your face mutilated beyond recognition
Crimson, dripping offal trailing from my jaws
Steam rising from the gaping hull of your carcass
On convulsing angelflesh I glut, insatiable
I feed
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11. |
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Arael
My world burns
Beyond the horizon
Neither sun nor animal
Star nor beast
Rendering firmament
Such withered fruit
Hangs ripe off the tree
O daughter
Would you die with me?
A horror
In scintillating symphony
Terror
And the dark of the end
Now I surrender
Forever burn
Autumn sky, freedom to die
I shall forever walk alone
Begone my horizon
In my darkness revealed
Freedom to die
Forever burn
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12. |
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A fractured heart beats
In an iron ribcage
Inside myself, beside myself
I won’t obey
Bloated limbs and snaking entrails
Ice blue hair in the red light
To reckon this horror
This glass that reflects me
O how we’ve fallen
Far from the arms of god
Mankind fears the darkness
So he scrapes away at the edges of it with fire
Revealing this
I cannot
I will not
I am not yours
I am not
I am
I am more
I am more than
I am more than this
“I must go now”
“This is goodbye”
Born alone
Reared isolate
I will leave this world
In my wake, desolate
All souls reborn as one
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13. |
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Erstes Blut, noch drei Minuten
Und ich werde bis meinen letzten
Atemzug kämpfen
And he’ll sit there, eyes to the floor
And he will wait for death as always
Sono baka
And through it all, we’ve learned
To twist our blades inward
To feel the emptiness give suck
Baptized in ochre blood
Marriage of steel and bone
Slaughterous eucharist
Ninefold sacrament of death
If you’re going to do it, do it now
Or let this all be for nothing
The uneasy dead are stirring
Vultures rend the flesh
From my tumulting adamantine bones
I don’t want to die
Mother
Dark arms reach skyward
With bone white fingers
Nine-pronged crimson lightning
Striketh down
From an endless heaven above
Sever the aorta
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14. |
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Part I: Black Moon Rising
Cast me out to a barren moon
Where the air turns to snow in my lungs
Where the ice shards bloom out from my skull
Under a sunless sky
Leave me to lie in the tar-black seas
Of an orphaned world thrust from the stars
Wandering boundless forever
In an ocean that’s never seen light
Let me die alone
Part II: The Heart
And it starts with
The ghost of a lover cupping his hands
The ghost of a mother reclines enraptured
I can taste your blood on my lips
Feel the pull of your gaze release me
As the steel doors slide shut
The chamber is open
Beginning and end as one
And I still clutch this cross to my chest
As I ascend
I hate this place, these people
This pestilential fucking air
I’m forced to breathe
But most of all
I hate my fucking self
Cast me out to the greatest nothing
Three thousand lifetimes of light from side to side
Spiralling in eternal dark for all time
Fucked and discarded
“To make or unmake the world”
“With these hands”
“What is it that you wish?”
I want to fucking die
Wash it all away
Cast me out
Part III: The Hand
We are the orphans of a world
Devastated by vanity
Cast down from decadence
We dance the night around
Blindly grasping at the shadows
Cast by indifferent astres
Despondent, broken and listless
Wandering idly around the sun
The tide is rolling in
Carrying the stench
Of salt and mortar
Headlong into the crimson
And I won’t be satisfied
Till I take their heads
They’re closing in
Seas of coagulating blood
In nomine domini, resiste
Stand in defiance
I won’t watch as you welcome death
Get up
Since suffering’s left you deafened
I will pound these words
In through your cavity
Rest one cheek on the concrete
Try to tell me that
The ice grows colder now?
White-hot steel in my heartbeat
Held the fire in your hand
And you let it burn out
Boy, you make me sick
Start living your life
With your fucking eyes open
Or I’ll drag you to Hell
With my fucking hands broken
Along with me
Alone with me
Part IV: The Here and Now
The sun lays down her head
Exhaling summer’s final breath
She paints the trees with gold
My forearms with vermilion
The trees rain with the colours of fire
Weeping as their children tumble down
To rot at my side in this blood red earth
A one-word commandment
Murmured on the sea
And it’s fucking “murder”
Oh dearest sun, how cruel you are
That you should turn away
Look upon this earth with a new face
And leave me behind
And I wonder
As leaves turn to blood in the water
How dying can be
As beautiful as this
I’m so tired
So tired of waiting
Oh, what I’d give to watch
It crumble down to dust
So tired of living
And I would wash away this empty world
Wash away this world for you, my love
But I will live
To face another day
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15. |
How Disgusting
01:16
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The red horizon
The bloodstained moon
White monoliths of rotting flesh
I found you prostrate
In this godforsaken place
The solemn oracle
Stood silently for a moment
Upon the red water
Before she vanished
With my hope
Every word you speak, you save face
Every step you take, you break pace
And you’re still no different
Here at the end
I brought my hands to your throat
As if to choke the life from this nightmare
You placed your hand on my jaw
A soft caress, and I knew I was awake
I knew that this was not a dream
To choose life
To die alone
With me
Forever and a curse
How disgusting
This is
I am
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Anna Pest Montréal, Québec
An eclectic metal project based in Montreal, Canada.
Anna Pest recommends:
Grindcore ferocity meets metalcore groove meets poppy hook writing sensibilities meets electronic fuckery. Wonderful tunes from some wonderful gals.
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Simply one of the best metal albums I have ever heard. Crushing, melancholic, triumphant, and unforgettable.
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One of the few technical death metal albums out there whose dizzying virtuosity is matched by its transcendental melodicism. A favourite of mine for many years, and likely for many more.
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Heaviest thing I’ve heard all year along with Altarage. Okay I’ve been listening to this record for the past two weeks and it just gets better and better. Dissonant grooves galore
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supported by 51 fans who also own “Dark Arms Reach Skyward With Bone White Fingers”
Death metal/deathcore hybridization done correct! All the atmospheric passages and samples feel right in place, with great sound. Instrumentation doesn't lack as well, but the vocals could've been a little less upfront. 8.5/10
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Stare Into Death And Be Still
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