<<  -- 4 --  Robert Anderson    SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

The start of Part 2 deals with the pair of beasts, one rising from the sea with seven heads and ten horns, deadly enough to reduce the chorus to rhythmic gibberish [listen -- No 14, Das Tier aus der Erde, 0:00-0:54]. The second beast ascends from the earth with dragon voice urging worship of the first. The chorus responds with a rampage of orgiastic abandon [listen -- No 14, Das Tier aus der Erde, 1:04-2:40]. There follows a flight of angels, the third of whom foretells through the tenor Reiner Geissdörfer a deadly draft of God's wrath for any worshipping the beast [listen -- No 15, Ankündigung des Gerichts und Seligpreisung, 1:39-2:39].

A threatening voice out of a temple swirling with smoke from the glory of God bids the seven angels pour out the vials containing the seven last plagues [listen -- No 17, Die ersten 4 Schalen, 0:00-0:59].

Torp conjures next a graphic picture of the whore of Babylon, perhaps more familiar with the Hudson than the Euphrates, decked with all the worthless finery and frippery that capitalism at its most global and exuberant can produce. She may now be comfortably drunk as well in some African suburb on the blood of the starving and the AIDS-devoted [listen -- No 21, Babylon, 0:00-2:13].

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