Not dead which eternal lie
Stranger aeons Death may die

You have probably heard these chilling words from the song "The Thing That Should Not Be". These words are from the story by H.P. Lovecraft, called The Nameless City. Cliff and Kirk were both huge fans of Lovecraft, and that is how two songs by Metallica, "The Call of Ktulu" and "The Thing That Should Not Be" were written. "The Call of Ktulu", the instrumental, is based on the short story, The Call of Cthulhu, which was written by H.P. Lovecraft in 1926. "The Thing That Should Not Be" is based on the stories The Call of Chthulhu, At The Mountains of Madness, and The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

Cthulhu
"If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings... It represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind. This thing, which seemed instinct with a fearsome and unnatural malignancy, was of a somewhat bloated corpulence..." ("The Call of Cthulhu")

In short, Cthulhu is a demon-god from the Cthulhu-spawn, which was a race of aliens that dwelled on Earth long before humans existed. He dwells in a sunken continent called "R'lyeh", while his followers wait for him to rise up and call them; hence the name "The Call of Cthulhu". He is now the great priest of the Great Old Ones

The most popular pronunciation is "kuh-THOO-loo", but it is said that it can be pronounced "kuh-TOO-loo", as shown in the spelling "Ktulu" in the song "The Call of Ktulu".
(see The Call of Cthulhu)

The Cthulhu Mythos
The Cthulhu Mythos is the style of writing that Lovecraft created when he was alive. It is a theme that appears in many of his stories. The Cthulhu Mythos is based on the modern mythology that Lovecraft created, and such things appear in it like Cthulhu, The Great Old Ones, Shoggoths, etc. Many other stories about the Cthulhu Mythos have been written by other authors after Lovecraft died.

The Great Race [of Yith]
The Great Race was (and still is) a race of aliens that came down to Earth from the planet Yith before the year 475,000,000 B.C. They can travel through time and communicate with all people and things in the past and the future. The Great Race at first had no bodies, but were actually just minds. They had the ability to take control of another creature's body, and that is why they are usually described by Lovecraft as "10 foot-high cones with a 10 foot base". They speak with some sort of clicking and scraping sound, and their heads and other organs are attatched to "foot-thick distensible limbs spreading from the apexes". The Great Race warred with The Great Old Ones. Eventually they sent their minds forward in time to about the year 3,000 A.D.
(see The Shadow Out of Time)

The Great Old Ones (or The Old Ones)
The Great Old Ones were gods that lived on Earth before any man did. They came "out of the sky" and lived on Earth about 2 billion years ago. They are described as "six foot long barrel shaped bodies about three feet in diameter at the center and one foot in diameter at the ends". They have 7-foot wings and 25 tentacles in the middle of their bodies and their heads are shaped like stars. At first, the Great Old Ones lived only under the sea, but eventuallly they began to build cities on land. The greatest city was the one in present-day Antarctica, as seen in "At The Mountains of Madness". They warred with an earlier version of the Cthulhu spawn, but eventually made peace. The Cthulhu Spawn built R'lyeh, but it sank under the ocean and The Great Old Ones were once again the dominating species. They also warred with the Shoggoths, but eventually won and took them as slaves. They still dwell underground in the great city in Antarctica and under water in R'lyeh, where Cthulhu is their great priest.
(see At The Mountains of Madness)

The Necronomicon
The Necronomicon is another creation by Lovecraft. It is supposedly a book written by "The Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred". The Necronomicon appears in many of Lovecraft's stories, and it supposedly talks about many things that have to do with the Cthulhu Mythos. Let me note that The Necronomicon is NOT real, as some very hardcore Lovecraft fans may think so.

One of Lovecraft�s best-known creations, he refers to the Necronomicon or Al Azif in no less than 18 of his stories. The original Arabic title of this manuscript was Al Azif, being a reference to the nocturnal sound of insects believed to be the howling of demons. Alhazred lived in Damascus, where the Necronomicon was written. In 738 A.D., he was set upon by an invisible monster who devoured him publicily in broad daylight. The Al Azif was translated into Greek by Theodorus Philetas of Constantinople, who gave it the name Necronomicon. Olaus Wormius then made a Latin translation in 1228.

In 1232, shortly after Wormius� translation, Pope Gregory IX banned both the Greek and Latin versions of the volume. Wormius indicates that the original Arabic text was lost by this time. Dr. John Dee made a translation into English, but only fragments of that version remain. At present, a 15th century Latin translation exists in the British Museum, and 17th century editions exist at the Biblioth�que Nationale in Paris, the Widener Library at Harvard, the University of Buenos Aires, and the Miskatonic University at Arkham. Understandably, all these copies remain under lock and key.
-The H.P. Lovecraft Archive

My Favorite Lovecraft Stories
You can read these stories online, because the copyright periods for them have ended.
At The Mountains of Madness
The Call of Cthulhu
The Doom That Came To Sarnath
The Dunwich Horror
The Hound
The Nameless City
The Rats in the Walls
The Shadow Out of Time
The Shadow Over Innsmouth

Links
The H.P. Lovecraft Archive
The H.P. Lovecraft Library