Scarlet Beast (Revelation 17:22) — also on YouTube.
Scarlet Beast takes its name from Revelation 17: a woman in purple and scarlet, seated on a beast with seven heads and ten horns. This song is a rewrite of our own “Revelation 17”, and it walks the long way round from the judgment of that chapter to the river and the tree of chapter twenty-two, by way of the Gospel’s strangest promise: that it is the ones who have sinned who get redeemed.
The film is set in a world with one colour. Everything is ash and silver except scarlet — the blood, the robe, the beast, the fire. At “Twenty-two — a new beginning” the gold of Revelation 22 bleeds back in, the letterbox opens, and the last frame is the stone from the cover, standing in the river at dawn.
The beast is where the dark marries the light.
Every citation that surfaces in the film’s margin is King James scripture: the verse the line is answering. They sit beside the words below.
The words
Intro · whispered
Seventeen... the woman on the waters.
Twenty-two... the river and the tree.
Everything between them is the fire.
Verse 1
Funny how the flow takes a man apart,
lyrical warfare — they filed it under art.
Seduced by a whisper he never heard start,
now he's pinning his sins on a purple heart.
He's killing his time just to borrow a crime,
crucifies the clock, then he begs for a sign,
sadistic, sorry, suffering on his dime —
till the end walks in like a gun on a rhyme.
Rhythm of reality, knock on divine doors,
a sanction, a song, or a whisper — it's yours.
Do what you do, we are keeping the scores;
whatever you're on, we already saw yours.
Pre-Chorus
We're the demons that dance while the city's asleep,
fallen angels on the night shift turning wrong into right.
Gasoline on a fire is a melody's might —
every paradox seen is a divine delight.
Chorus
It's the end of days! (end of days)
No road to live, no way to pray —
purge it in the blaze, lost inside the maze.
Scarlet Beast — Revelation Seventeen!
Twenty-two — a new beginning,
a new promise, a new beginning.
Verse 2
Jealousy's fear only breeds a new pain,
possessive plights that only ignorance ordains.
Freedom don't reign in a ball and a chain,
but ignorance fans every fury to flame.
The sluts and the whores knew heaven's a game,
the sacred whore serving — the fiends know her name.
She rides the scarred beast where the blood still remains,
while the angel who hates all the violence complains.
Verse 3 · the gospel turn
Hear the screaming formation of frustrated fiends,
we go searching the lowly to fill out our teams —
the murderers, the criminals, the obscene —
'cause it's those who have sinned that get redeemed.
The righteous never needed a doctor to call;
I'm the watchman on the wall for the worst of y'all.
Satan in the spring, and Jesus in the fall —
the Scarlet Beast, the most sacred of all.
Chorus
It's the end of days! (end of days)
No road to live, no way to pray —
purge it in the blaze, lost inside the maze.
Scarlet Beast — Revelation Seventeen!
Twenty-two — a new beginning,
a new promise, a new beginning.
Bridge · the serpent
The serpent that handed the apple to Eve...
your perception, perceived, is so naive.
The darkness shines — it shines so bright,
I'm the venom and the antidote to your snake's bite.
Open your eyes.
See.
Believe.
Verse 4
Patience is waiting for purpose to partake,
the numbers run high for heaven's own sake.
Damnation's just the pressure that diamonds make —
we're the skin of the fruit that seduced the snake.
Hell is the hallway to sacred doors,
love is the only reason we went to war.
So humble yourself, crawl on all fours —
but don't you bow your head to us anymore.
Final chorus · Revelation 22
It's the end of days! (end of days)
No road to live, no way to pray —
purge it in the blaze, lost inside the maze.
Scarlet Beast — Revelation Seventeen!
Twenty-two — a new beginning,
a new promise, a new beginning.
Outro
Red in the vein, and red in the seed,
the gardener burns what is left of the weeds.
So sow what you sow — we are counting the deeds;
patience and compassion is how it proceeds.
We are the truth and the eternal light,
and we still scream with the serpent's bite.
The beast is where the dark marries the light —
scarlet blood bleeds tonight.
Tonight.
Go deeper
- Revelation 17 — Babylon, the woman on the beast
- What is the Scarlet Beast?
- Who is the Scarlet Woman?
- Prophecies Fail. Purpose Doesn’t. — the essay and its film
