It's pretty straightforward, it has to do with Egyptian magick. Now a lot of the time traditions like this become obscured over time as they're passed down, and sometimes they are even kept secret originally when they are in practice. For example, alchemists used to pretend they were trying to produce gold, while in reality they were seeking spiritual enlightenment which would not have been permitted by the Christian institution of the time. Now I don't know much about Egyptian magick, but I know enough about stuff in that ballpark to tell you that the aim of that ritual Nile depicts is not to physically animate the dead, that part is all exaggerated. Rather the aim is to communicate with the dead, in much the same way that you can pay a new-age spiritualist in modern times to communicate with the dead; of course even that is debatable in its own right, in terms of whether or not there is any truth to it.

I've always wondered what this is about

The Essential Salts by Nile

The necromancers of Giza
A cult of reanimators
Concerned with interrogation of the long dead
Corpses who may be revived and made to talk
And describe the contents of rare books
And gold hidden in the earth
Although they are often reluctant to reveal their secrets
And must be encouraged with fire and blade

A corpse chosen for resurrection
Is cut into parts of convenient size
Boiled in clean water
Linen strips of mummification are removed
And the skull and bones liquefied
And boiled until all water is gone
What remains in the bottom
Is a white crystalline substance
That may be carried in the palms of two hands
This white powder contains the essential salts
Of the man whose corpse was boiled
It is from this powder that the living body may be reconstituted
And made to serve as a house for the soul
Which is called back into its former flesh by words of power

It is a great shock to the soul
To tear it back from its resting place and reanimate it
The resurrected are often insane and scream ceaselessly or dash themselves into walls
If the salts are contaminated with the essence of other living beings
When the mummy has been the breeding place of vermin
The revitalization of the salts produces something
That is part man and part whatever gnawed his corpse
These horrors lack the faculty of speech
Or their speech is crazed and bestial
And must be immediately slain
For though the memory of the man may remain intact
The verminous parts of his reanimated nature
Inhibit his human expression

Those who have served their purpose are killed
By strangulation with a cord around the neck
And their bodies burned
Their ashes gathered and cast into the Nile
Where the currents carry them to sea

Am I the only one who thinks Venom's "House of Pain" is about sleep paralysis?

I could hear you screaming
Heard you cry in pain
But I thought you were dreaming
Are you going insane?

House of pain
Welcome to the house of pain
You're insane

I could feel you dying
Again and again and again
I believed you were lying
Now I know you're insane

House of pain

I could see you bleeding
Feel you die in vain
As your flesh started seething
In your house of pain

Nah, I don't think so. Screaming in pain? Sleep paralysis is the exact opposite. NO PAIN !!!

And I do walk upon Wan’s Dyke
And I do survey the land
And I did become the Reaper with my own bare hands+
For I am Wodan,
Though, some call me Hermes,
Some call me Roman Mercury,
God of cargos,
God of weather,
Hanging God of boundaries,
Hanging God of Gibbet Hill
Killing God of hidden doorways.

Spinning the yarn from Wansdyke to Silbury
Spinning the taelbook, telling the tale
Telling the tellbook to all and sundry
Keltiberians and Irish Gael
Then I hear camp followers bellow afar
Their shrieking lament for Johnny Guitar:

"Look to the farthest far horizon
Look to the bloodlust deepest scar
Look to the scattering Brythonic uprising
For this be the wall of Johnny Guitar

There be the ditch that you shall die in
Here be the wall that I shall cry on
Ditch dug with antler and ox bone shovel
This rising wall that shades our ancient hovel."

Look to the north a quick mile yonder
Look to our Yggdrasilbury
Look to the Saxon chasing Viking
Look to the Norman chasing Saxon
Look to the German chasing German
German German German German
Here in the bloodlust deeper scar
For here be the wall of Johnny Guitar

"Play your gloom axe Stephen O’Malley
Sub bass clinging to the sides of the valley
Sub bass ringing in each last ditch and combe
Greg Anderson purvey a sonic doom."

To rage in sound this valiant despair
Doom and gloom as each a splendid pair
To rage in sound the valiant despair:

Not Abraham,
Not Moses
And not Christ
Neither Jove to whom we sacrificed,
Not Attis
Not Mohammed,
But to hilltop Thor
We rave and dance and weep and we implore:
Look to the farthest far horizon
Don’t blame the messenger,
Don’t blame the messenger,
Look to the farthest far horizon
Don’t blame the messenger.
Don’t blame the messenger,
For I am Death so Ragnarock with me
For I am Doom so Ragnarock with me.

And I stood upon Wan’s Dyke
And I did survey the land
And I did become the Reaper with my own bare hands...

And then I was King Vikar with his arms outstretched
And then I was King Vikar with his broken neck
And then I was the villain and the victim and the priest
Was grim misunderstanding and was grim as death itself

My Wall My Wall caught in the thrall of my Wall
My Wall My Wall caught beneath the thrall of my Wall.

Here in the bloodlust deeper scar
For here be the wall of Johnny Guitar
Here in the bloodlust deeper scar
For here be the wall of Johnny Guitar
Play your gloom axe Stephen O’Malley
Sub bass ringing the sides of the valley
Sub bass climbing up each last ditch and combe
Greg Anderson purvey a sonic doom.

Stand in the thrall
Stand in the thrall
Stand in the thrall of my tidal wall
Stand in the thrall
Stand in the thrall
Stand in the thrall of my tidal wall
Stand in the thrall
Stand in the thrall
Stand in the thrall of my tidal wall

Mothers to your bosoms,
Grab your child and sing,
As to your breasts cascade and sing:
Brothers and fathers,
Down to the thing in the middle of the town
To judge at the thing

These the effeminate priests of Frey
That don their drag
And shriek through the day
That drag their God through the muddiest fields
Spilling seed to raise the yields
These the odd castrated womb-men
On this onerous land of no men

There the infernal priestess of Freyja,
These her people layer on layer
Then the infernal priestess of Freyja
Visiting the farms
The seething seer
Visiting the farms
And rarely leaving
Mounting the tumulus
The people grieving
Dodens doddering dead and dying.

Hear the modest priests of Ing
Who’s harkening always let us sing
That let’s us free our tightest waistband
Let’s us fertilise our own land
Spunked entire nations from one phallus
Spunked the vegetation into being
Spilled the super seed into the one day superceded earth.

Old Mother Fucker
She was a cocksucker
To give her poor family a home
Went down on their ding song
And drank for a sing song
But ended her sad life alone.

Around the church in Yatesbury the dead
Lie scattered underneath the sacred yew
As Sheila the Witch attending Sunday prayer
Praises a God but never tells them who
And from my Wall observing Sheila the Witch
Praises her God but never explaining which.

And every Monday night by the light of Moon
Those Meddlesome meddlesome meddlesome bells
And the heavy metal of the heathen bells
Meddlesome meddlesome meddlesome bells
And the bad heavy metal of the heathen bells
Meddlesome meddlesome meddlesome bells
And the heavy metal of the heathen bells
Meddlesome meddlesome meddlesome bells
And the bad heavy metal of the heathen bells

And Doggen can testify to my claim
That the Christians of Yatesbury are Christian in name
But their stomping pounding actions attest
To their Christianity happiest at rest
And Doggen who played at the John Stewart Hall
Can attest that its keeper is the heathenest of all
Is a shapeshifter tending to her hogweed hidden
And her dear Paul wallows in the village pond nay midden

For all of us are boundaried by Wan’s Dyke at the west
And the great world hill which spies us and can never let us rest
Bringing on Iranian Mithra
From its home beneath the east
Caught always in the thrall of my Wall
Caught always in the thrall of my Wall

Stand in the thrall
Stand in the thrall
Stand in the thrall of my wall
Stand in the thrall
Stand in the thrall
Stand in the thrall of my wall
Stand in the thrall
Stand in the thrall
Stand in the thrall of my wall

Here in the bloodlust deeper scar
For here be the wall of Johnny Guitar
Here in the bloodlust deeper scar
For here be the wall of Johnny Guitar
Play your gloom axe Stephen O’Malley
Sub bass ringing the sides of the valley
Sub bass climbing up each last ditch and combe
Greg Anderson purvey a sonic doom...

Don’t blame the messenger of gloom,
Don’t blame the messenger of doom,
For this be the Ragmarockingest aeion
In stillness O’Malley and Anderson play on... play on... play on...

Who is this Geoffrey?
All I see is this cold cadaver
Why is this Geoffrey
lying in puddles of pus on a gurney?
Tell me of this Geoffrey,
this boy with a noose around his neck;
More about Geoffrey:
why is he wearing his mother's bra?

How old was Geoffrey?
At a guess, I'd say
about twelve or thirteen;
He died accidentally
from auto-erotic asphyxiation;
He'd been masturbating...
our little stiff still has one on
and it's been one week!

The resurrection men
took their sweet time
Cross-dressed fruit:
what a way to die!
Now he's ours:
the apple of our eve;

Fetch the dead sphincter:
cold green meat
How did his ass taste?
Tender and sweet...

And then we fucked it...

Thought I'd pass it by this thread: W.A.S.P. - Thunderhead

I get what most of the song is about, but there's a line that Blackie sings at the very beginning before the verse or intro riff that's a bit subdued, so you can barely make it out.

The line begins at 20 seconds in; I got one portion of it - "... they can see who they..."

The bit before it and the bit after it I can hardly understand, and I own the album and it doesn't show the lyrics in there, either. If someone understands what he says, can you elaborate on what he means? It's probably WASP's only lyrics in their 30 year run that didn't really get published (that I know of off the top of my head).

I Am The Black Wizards

Mightiest am I, but I am not alone in this cosmos of mine
For the black hills consists of black souls, souls that already died one
thousand deaths
Behind the stone walls of centuries they breed their
black art
Boiling their spells in cauldrons of black gold
Far up in the mountains, where the rain fall not far, yet the sun cannot reach
The wizards, my servants, summon the souls of macrocosm
No age will escape my wrath
I travel through time and I return to the future
I gather wisdom now lost
I visit again the eternally ancient caves
before a mighty Emperor thereupon came Watching the mortals "discovering" my chronicles
guarded by the old demons, even unknown
to me
Once destroyed their souls are being summoned to my timeless prison of hate
It is delightful to feast upon the screaming souls
that was destroyed in my future
How many wizards that serve me with evil I know not
My empires has no limits
From the never ending
mountains black, to the bottomless lakes
I am the ruler and has been for eternity's long
My wizards are many, but their essence is
mine
Forever there are in the hills in their stone homes of
grief
Because I am the spirit of their existence
I am them.


Into The Infinity Of Thoughts

As the Darkness creeps over the Northern mountains of Norway
and the silence reach the woods
I awake and rise... Into the night I wander
like many nights before, and like in my dreams, but centuries ago
Under the moon, under the trees.
Into the Infinity of Darkness
beyond the light of a new day
into the frozen nature chilly,
beyond the warmth of the dying sun.
Hear the whispering of the wind
the shadows calling...
I gaze into the moonwhich grants me visions
these twelve full moon nights of the year
and for each night the light of the holy disciples fade away
Weaker and weaker, one by one
I gaze into the moon which makes my mind pure as crystal lakes
my eyes cold as the darkest winter nights
but yet there is a flame inside
It guides me into the dark shadows beyond this world
into the infinity of thoughts...
thoughts of upcoming reality.
In the name of the almighty Emperor
I will ride the Lands in pride
carrying the Blacksword at hand, in warfare
I will grind my hatred upon the loved ones
Despair will be brought upon the hoping childs of
happiness
Wherever there is joy the hordes of the eclipse
will pollute sadness and hate under the reign of fear.
The lands will grow black
There is no sunrise yet to come
into the wastelands of phantoms lost
May these moments under the moon be eternal. May the infinity haunt me... In Darkness.