The Serpent's Lace

"The Serpent's Lace" is a melancholic blues rock song about lost love and societal constraints. The song is performed by a contralto voice with haunting backing vocals, electric guitars, bass, drums, and atmospheric keyboards.
The lyrics tell the story of a woman whose lover chose societal expectations over their love. The song opens with a wedding scene, where the groom has a "vacant gaze" and is "trapped in tradition's hazy maze." The singer reflects on a past love, a "fire that burned, a crimson glow," but which the man extinguished due to "the whispers" and "the shame.". He "sold his soul for comfort's price."
The chorus emphasizes the singer's feelings of being trapped, with the lines, Love, they say, is meant to bind, but chains are all I seem to find." Her heart was "pure and true," and she saw him as "the sea I journeyed through."
The song suggests the world is full of such lost loves, where "the brave are few, the cowards vast." The lyrics also touch on themes of societal pressure and the difficulty of maintaining love in such conditions. The bridge offers a glimmer of hope, suggesting that love lives on within. The outro concludes that fate, not the individuals, is to blame.