Testimony of EMPEROR's beginning, this is probably the rawest demo recorded by any band of the "old great Norwegian scene" (BURZUM, SATYRICON,GORGOROTH etc. etc.), if you don't consider MAYHEM demos ("Pure fucking armageddon" & "Deathcrush") as BM but as DM. The sound is quite poor, yet better than the one you have now, in 2002, ten years later, in most BM demos that see the light of day (a good example of this are ANTAEUS' demos, pure shit with incredibly horrible sound ! ). Anyway, the music is pure Black Metal, with fast drums, insane guitar parts and Ihsahn's vocals are completely... tortured ! Try to find now a singer using its voice like him ! I don't know how old they were when they recorded this, but they seem very young in the booklet (they were probably under 20), and I still wonder how kids like this, in Norway, can have created such FUCKING GOOD releases... Because this is the purest BM ever, with no compromise, and when you see the band's line-up on that demo, you understand these guys deserve to be considered as legends (MORTIIS, SAMOTH, IHSAHN...). If only they had stopped after "In the nightside eclipse" instead of releasing later "gay music CDs"... For those who don't know this demo, you can either buy the CD re-issue made by Candlelight 2 years ago (together with the tracks from the "Emperor" MLP) or you leave the scene, because you don't deserve to listen to Black Metal if you don't know such recordings. There is also a bootleg made by Wild Rags records, but it's almost as hard to get now as this original demo tape from'92...

Bow down to the mighty EMPEROR...

9.5/10

© 2002 lord pesten