From the recording FIVE - THE FIFTH SEASON
This song paints an allegory of climate and cosmic upheaval: the familiar four seasons that once ordered human life are broken by the arrival of a destructive “Fifth Season.” Its imagery of burning, flooding, and disorientation suggests ecological collapse, where farmers cannot plant, sailors lose their bearings, and even the moon and birds seem estranged from nature’s cycles. The Fifth Season embodies both catastrophe and permanence — not just a passing anomaly, but a new, fearful order that “walks the year” without beginning or end. Whispered as “Ember” in the outro, it carries the sense of a world smouldering in the aftermath of human disruption, a time “between the times” where old certainties vanish and survival itself becomes uncertain.
Lyrics
Verse 1
Once there were four, we knew their names
Spring with her blooms, and Summer’s flames
Autumn’s gold, and Winter’s sleep
All in their time, their circles deep
Verse 2
But something came we’d never known
A restless wind, a breaking bone
A turning sky that would not mend
A season with no start or end
Chorus
The Fifth has come, it walks the year
It burns, it floods, it whispers fear
It steals the dawn, it bends the light
It wakes the day, and haunts the night
Verse 3
No farmer sows, no sailor sails
The air is thick, the compass fails
Birds forget their ancient flight
The moon looks strange in the swollen night
Chorus
The Fifth has come, it walks the year
It burns, it floods, it whispers fear
It takes the land, it claims the sea
It writes a new eternity
Outro
This is not the age of Spring…
Nor Summer, nor Autumn, nor Winter’s ring…
This is the time between the times —
The Fifth Season.
Ember
Ember
Ember