Lyrics
IntroThe wheel is still above the shaft.
The cage is waiting in the rain.
Count every lamp. Count every man.
The mountain does not count the same.
DescentLower us past the roots of pine,
past timber wet with ancient breath.
The noon becomes a thread of grey,
then folds its narrow eye away.
Above, Hyttsjön holds the sky.
Below, the cable hums and sways.
We leave the wind, we leave our names,
and enter stone without a day.
Voice of the MountainYou call me empty. I am not.
I carry colours without light.
Your iron sings against my ribs.
I learn your footsteps in the night.
You take the red. You take the black.
You take the white from seam and bone.
But what you cannot name, I keep.
You never enter me alone.
Hammer ChantStrike.
Listen.
Strike.
Let the echo find the fault.
Turn.
Breathe.
Lift.
Brace the timber. Clear the wall.
Again.
Again.
The rock gives little, takes its toll.
Långban, deep below.
Water BreakFirst a whisper through the crack,
then a silver tongue, then rain.
Pumps begin their iron prayer.
Water climbs the walls again.
Under lake and under road,
cold finds every path we know.
No hammer drowns that patient voice.
Långban, deep below.
The VeinBlood-red ore in lantern dust,
black manganese and dolomite.
No crown of gold, no royal seam,
but worlds no living eye could write.
We broke the rock for what would burn,
for steel, for glass, for field and flame.
We cast the stranger stones aside.
The future gave the waste a name.
Deepest LevelAt three-six-nine beneath the lake,
the blind shaft reached its final floor.
The drill asked one last question there.
The mountain answered: nothing more.
No richer vein. No hidden sun.
Only the dark with weight and tone.
And every blow returned to us,
no longer ours, no longer stone.
AscentHaul us upward, slow and hard,
through timber rain and engine breath.
The winter stars cut clean and white.
We carry dust beneath the flesh.
One man turns before the gate.
He hears the levels far below:
the pick, the pump, the cable song,
and voices only mountains know.
FragmentLångban, deep below,
deeper than the miners go.
Långban, deep below,
stone remembers every blow.
OutroThe wheel is still. The water rose.
The final cage climbed into day.
Above, the pines reclaim the wind.
Below, unnamed colours wait.
I am not empty.
I am old.
I keep what iron could not hold.
Långban.
Deep below.