Across the Empty Plains (2017)

Across the Empty Plains is driven by furious Swedish black metal, laced with death and thrash influences, yet haunted throughout by Devourer’s signature sense of vast, crushing cosmic dread.

Completed in September 2016, then buried in darkness as John’s mental collapse and seven electro-convulsive shock treatments cast it into silence. Lost. Forgotten. For months it waited in the void, until it was unearthed and released on May 25th, 2017. Days later, on June 1st, Iron, Blood & Death Corporation gave it physical form — the first Devourer album entrusted to the label.

Lyrically, Across the Empty Plains is a bleak passage through inner collapse and cosmic negation, where psychological torment and metaphysical emptiness mirror one another. The album charts a progression from anxiety, madness, and self-loathing toward a stripped-down acceptance of annihilation, with humanity depicted as both prisoner and executioner of its own existence. Gods are absent or meaningless, hope is exposed as illusion, and suffering becomes a lens through which clarity is painfully attained. Across visions of disease, rage, isolation, and extinction, the lyrics frame life as a slow procession across barren ground — toward dissolution, where identity erodes, resistance fades, and everything finally returns to nothing.


Tracklist
1. Insania (4:21)
music: john falk – lyrics: fredrik håf
Buried deep within thy self an ominous emotion is growing
Sleepless nights are passing by the melancholia is feeding on depression and anxiety
Time is lost in feverish dreams with your every dying breath it's evolving
Thirsting to take over the remaining fragments of your spiritual existence

Nesting in the depths of your soul
They are screaming inside you
Clawing to get out
Of the captivity of flesh!

Irregular heartbeats and hyperventilation
As morbid sights keeps flickering before your eyes

The stains of blood from your open lacerations
Turns into the art of your suffering
Transcendence will come through Insania

Perceived as pure madness
What could as well be an illuminating clarity

Engulfed in darkness, but isn’t this the light you have always been searching for?
To ignite the cleansing fire, to push that inner self-destruct button!
2. Perdition (4:01)
music: john falk – lyrics: fredrik håf
It lies hidden from the sun
Rejecting all rays of light
It swallows all forms and shapes
That reaches its obscure domain

Gnawing on the roots of vitality
And the only thing that can escape
Its grinding jaws of defiance
Is the hatred to all that came to be

Usurper of all bring forth the perdition to the cosmic balance
The unforgiving force that lies in the outskirts of what is known
Manifest in the starless sky and take upon the form of death
Tear through the fabric of space and reveal the liberation from the Curse of clay!

Darkness falls upon the world as the sun sets to never rise
The night shall be eternal as the shunned storms through the shattered gates
For thine is the vengeance and the destruction of the demiurge
Its light can never penetrate the ruthless force that separates!
3. Nexus of Evil (6:03)
music: john falk – lyrics: fredrik håf
I watched the spiral of agony trickle down into a celerity of absolute horror
The unknown magnitudes of anguish is my encomium to the lord of pain
In the fiery pits of hell I burned until my burnt out soul was all but dead

Pitch black, pitch black, pitch black and filled to the brim with despair
So far, so far, so far beyond any kind of salvation

Burning hatred for everything and everyone
Is what makes the despair bearable
I have no choice but to remain imprisoned
A confinement of my own making

The most, the most, the most superior of the Devils devices
The mark, the mark, the mark of the doom serpent never fades

I am death incarnate, a plague upon the human kind
I am a manifestation of doom, a black flame, a nexus of evil
I foresee the fall of man, I am a dark beacon for all damned souls

I stopped looking back at the misery and what lies ahead don’t bother me no more
I arose from the dead to torment this fucking world of humanity
I become as a nexus of evil brought to materialize the dead

The dead, the dead, the dead once they where so full of life
And now, and now, and now they lie beneath the earth and sleep
4. Across the Empty Plains (4:36)
music: john falk – lyrics: fredrik håf
The wind is whispering of nothingness
The bleeding wounds that can never heal
It speaks through all the withered trees
Once so drunk on lives futility
Without eyelids and mobility
Without Gods or conformity
The truthfulness of all your suffering
For the soulless majesty

And as you’re dragged across the empty plains
To grind away your last mortality
You see clear what never was and couldn’t be
Try to repent but to what end?
The sand of time will hide their last remains
So tell me are you one of them?
Or can you break free from those carnal chains
To join the pale rider once again

From afar I behold them
All those who grovelled and crawled
All those who grasped for the clouds
And yearned for something more

For you who stare into the glaring sun and hope
I shall remove that veil to show
That nothing awaits but that gloomy void
5. Deeds of Rancor (5:52)
music: john falk – lyrics: john falk & fredrik håf
The noose is hanging on the gallows-tree
It is time to rejoin all those
Wandering in dreaming sleep for eternity
In the hall of the legends of old
Inveigled by the dark lord to dream of hell
Asleep upon the dead black sea of oil
That made the hellfire burn with strength
I watch the world...through eyes made of embers

The struggle within is lost each night
But there is no surrendering
I climbed the walls of despair
Only to find the abyss that lies beyond
Alone in darkness and silence
Trained to fight and to always win
What a formidable foe I face
The monster that is me

An untamed force of pure destruction
Raging inside the mind and soul
A beast that never bows to none but its own will
Struggling to merge to become one with me

And so we ride forged as one
Towards the merciless storm of anti-life
And onwards to the beckoning darkness
Where all the mortal sins and wickedness resides

Deeds of rancor - set it all ablaze
Deeds of rancor - in order to erase
Deeds of rancor - they are a necessity
Deeds of rancor - a nihilistic philosophy
6. Finem Vitae Cura (5:51)
music: john falk – lyrics: fredrik håf
Bedridden with scabs that merged with the sheets
Cold sweat mixes with the desperate tears that runs to the lips so dry of thirst
While tired lungs are struggling with the phlegm
And eerie drowning breaths are the only sounds to be heard
A lonely candle burns and the shadows dances on the wall
To the silent music of sorrow that’s beginning to fill the room
Loved ones at the bed side tries to bring comfort
With egoistic hope that only fuels the catatonia
The stench of sickness stings in their nostrils
As their skin starts to ache and they shiver though there isn’t cold
They are beginning to develop the first early symptoms
Of a ruthless disease that in hindsight shall be considered the cure

The gaping hungry graves are yearning for nourishment
And the ravenous worms will soon grow fat on the decaying flesh
A plague that makes the black death pale in comparison
Humanity falls into the inevitable as corpses dry in the scorching sun
All dignity vanish with the weakening of the limbs
Why not just end it all while you still possess the strength?
Or are you too proud or just fearing your pathetic God
All though that none of your prayers have never been answered?
Join the ones that you loved six feet underground
After all it was them who gave you the meaning to go on
A last breath is drawn in the blood red dawn
And a sigh of relief is uttered to the cold caress of death

Finem Vitae Cura
Finem Vitae Cura
Finem Vitae Cura
Finem Vitae Cura
7. Throne of Agony (3:39)
music: john falk – lyrics: john falk & fredrik håf
Upon a massive throne of agony
Sits the true creator of pain
The faith of the human kind
Is decided by its whims and caprices
In all the corners of the world
In every beings conscience
Anxiety, fear and loneliness
Are their only companions in life

Come closer towards the shadows
Unleash your most primal instincts
Take our hand let us guide you, step off that final ledge
All the wonders awaits you beneath your feet

We are you we are the madness
That lurks within you all
Begging to be free at every moment
In your deepest animal mind
We are what you hide from in your beds at night
We are what you sedate into paralysis
When you go to the nocturnal haven
Where we cannot tread

We are the curse of the universal order
The cracks in the pillars that upholds the laws of unity
We are the mirror that reveals
The fatal ugliness of your inner self
8. Extirpation (4:58)
music: john falk – lyrics: fredrik håf
All the wisdom withheld from the ones that sleeps awake
The illusion of life is preserved in aging flesh
The need to sacrifice your own sanity
To be able to see through the divine obscurity

No judgment will come at the end of days
No one to blame and nothing to praise
Give in to the lie or transcend beyond
Drink the venom from the serpents tongue
Plunder the sanctity of the lord
And taste the nectars from the virgin whore
Give in to all the filth and pain
Rejoice as you fall from grace!

The corruption is feasting on the minds of the vermin
As the masses seeks meaning they just seal their own fate
So easily led to the grave they dug for themselves
In the ground they shall rot as the fallen ascend

Climbing on each others backs
To reach the gilded gates
And behind them is just an empty promise
Another form of slavery!

The mushroom clouds will erect as temples around this cursed world
The epiphany of doom will strike with the majestic radiance of death
No more than animals you were and you died as such
And I shall sit amongst your bones for a while
As the ashes hides the sun for decades for to come
9. A Misanthropic Introspective (3:30)
music: john falk – lyrics: fredrik håf
A hovering presence that has been with me through my years of living
Day and night it has tried to get in contact
My agonizing periods has led to enlightenment
No more bliss from ignorance is a fair price to pay

A rabid voice not from this world speaks through me in tongues
Unveiling a deeper understanding of our confinement
The adrenalin is rushing from the wrath that builds inside me
A manic quest for the twisted path that I have to find

Like a wolf amongst sheep I’m in this cesspool of humanity
With a shallow interpretation of what really is freedom
Most are all too blind to see the obvious
The desire for the wilderness is what drives me onwards!

A misanthropic introspective
Liberated from denial
With an open heart towards the abyss
And no regrets of what’s left behind

A misanthropic introspective
Cannot restrain the hate I feel towards my kind
And I’m a part in that equation
The contempt is embedded in my mind!

The fire burns deep within, I’ll never bend to their will!
10. Omega (3:31)
music: john falk – lyrics: fredrik håf
At some point everything
Must return to not being
The decay is accelerating in all
Just like the borders of space

Towards the lightless vacuum
That lies beyond
We move to rest
In the fathomless cradle of emptiness
Details

Written between 2015 and 2016
Produced by John Falk
Cover artwork by Juanjo Castellano

Fredrik Håf – vocals
John Falk – guitars & bass
Johan Vikholm – first guitar solo on Across the Empty Plains

Releases

May 25th, 2017

June 1st, 2017


Booklet

Finem Vitae Cura music video single

Finem Vitae Cura — “the cure is the end of life” — was released on June 27th, 2018, and stands as one of Devourer’s most explicitly mortal visions. Produced by John Falk, the video is a stark, claustrophobic meditation on disease, decay, and the moment where suffering turns into release. Fredrik Håf appears as merciful death incarnate, not as a sudden executioner, but as an inevitable presence that patiently waits while the body collapses from within.

At 3:13, the video version fractures away from the album recording. From this point onward, the song is rearranged and remixed into a more industrial form, amplifying the sense of mental collapse and terminal inevitability. This transformation gives the video its own identity, in some respects surpassing the album version in both intensity and unease, and sealing it as a distinct work, not merely visual accompaniment.


Throne of Agony music video single

The ghostly plink tones that open Throne of Agony and echo throughout the song were not synthesized, but drawn directly from the guitar itself—played with a plectrum on the strings above the fretboard, near the tuners, and captured using a large-diaphragm microphone.

Released on January 30th, 2018, the video for Throne of Agony exists as an independent visual interpretation of Devourer’s music. The band took no part in its creation. It was directed and edited by Rick van de Dood, who approached Devourer for permission after encountering Across the Empty Plains through a particularly strong review.

Starring Sima Kirjazowa and shot by Director of Photography Paul Damen, the video stands apart from the band’s intent or control. It renders the song as a solitary human descent, functioning as a parallel structure to the album’s desolation and its reach beyond Devourer’s own hand.


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The zip archive is ordered according to media-player hierarchies, to be extracted directly into your media platform’s library folder for proper recognition.

  • 44.1 kHz 16 bit FLAC files with embedded cover
  • Album backdrop
  • Lyrics
  • Finem Vitae Cura [music video]
  • Throne of Agony [music video]