Death Mask was written within the context of exposure to the writings of the Italian group of writers known as the Teatro Grottesco: the centerpiece of which are the writings of Luigi Chiarelli and Luigi Pirandello. The sense of nihilism at the dawn of modernity in the interwar years is seen as particularly acute within the specific description of the groups intent as penned by the writer Adriano Tilgher (1887-1941) in his examination of Chiarelli's drama the "La Maschera e il Vosto (The Mask and the Face)" The dread sense of futility capitulated to the Orwellian hammer of fate fueled the writing of this song.
lyrics
This head is in constant need
You can't heal this grave disease
Life is absolute illusion
And no conviction inside these hands of fate
Life kills this life
We dream in ominous darkness
In flesh vain and hollow
We burn self aware
And suffocate on the leach
Life kills this life
Death Mask - Teatro Grottesco
Withered in intimated darkness
No light hath yet been shown
In visions night and open graves
Eclipsed in spiritual personal haze
Don the death mask, welcome the night
Putrescence of existence of eternal strife
Awareness of illusion contradiction of life
Welcome the dread of endless night
Twixt sun and shadow doth we walk
Conviction-less, meaningless, seemingly lost
Embraced in plague and decay