Inspiration: mythic murderers, real or fictional (or are they?) - Jack the Ripper, Sweeney Todd, Dr Jekyll/Mr. Hyde...

 

The city gates are closed, safe walls and buildings of smoke

As the bell’s doom tolls, day dies, shadows grow

You feeling safe now? Whilst under, fires bellow

The river glistens. What shady secrets lie below?

Eye for eye, don’t you know you reap what you sow?

 

Scratch the surface of this ideal community

Men wearing masks of respectability

Away from mad crowds, the doctor ceases to hide

A razor glares bright, a demon in disguise

Life for life, it takes but one to unravel all our laws

 

Bloodstains in the night

Black by gaslight

 

White pavement screeching, each night a deadly countdown

As vice has leaked in, hear the music of the night

Beasts with no names, faces drowned in ruby red

Exhale whispers of fear, and awe, and hate

Grime and crime, perpetual dark beneath the fog-clogged sky

 

Fancy machine, a righteous dream

In an ocean of chaos we aim for islands of order

 

Fortune in our future,

Glorious peak of progress

Rise and fall, new Babylon

Pride crumbling down till even ruins turn to sand

 

Stony-hearted mother, fiends round every corner

Decadence plagues the air

Street after street, drinking tears

And vaporous sighs of despair

 

Fancy machine, a fallacious dream,

We barred windows, locked every door,

Building a sanctuary that turned out to be fertile grounds for hidden sins

 

Scratch the surface of this ideal community

Men wearing masks of respectability

Beasts with no name, faces drowned in ruby red

Exhale whispers of fear, and awe, and hate

                Eye for eye, don’t you know you reap what you sow?

 

Desperate preys in the night    Reason’s gone wild

Predators in the night                  So close behind

Broken men in the night             Die by gaslight

 

Roam the pits, Flee the streets

Where the beasts, Men or freaks,

Are killing by gaslight / Are dying by gaslight