This compilation CD was born on Y2K from the collaboration between the 3 French underground labels Spikekult, Black Procession and Dae Mortis (all of them are based near Paris). It presents rare songs from these 4 undergorund acts : JUDAS ISCARIOT and KRIEG from USA, ETERNAL MAJESTY from France and MACABRE OMEN from Greece. The first 4 tracks are KRIEG's ones, they are totally unreleased (or maybe do they also appear on the "Black Plague" CD ?), I guess they are demo tracks, probably taken from the pre-KRIEG band called IMPERIAL. They are in the vein of the first CD, some sick, disharmonic and chaotic songs that clearly express the disgust of Lord Imperial for all form of "well-established" things, even well-polished Black Metal... Then comes ETERNAL MAJESTY ; they play a similar music to their comrades ANTAEUS, mabe with a weaker sound that doesn't transmit all ther power of their songs, but basically both bands are extremely close. This is certainly why they recorded a split tape back in 1998. This is quite a "revelation" on this CD as these tracks are probably their best. JUDAS ISCARIOT's songs are in fact the famous "unreleased" 1993 demo (now re-released on a 12"MLP together with the "Dethroned..." MLP), no need to spend hours commenting them but I should say the songs from this demo that appear on the band's first CD are here much more interesting as they are better played and the drums are here listenable (there's a drum-machine), because on the band's first CD, Akenathen tried to play drums but obviously he wasn't very skilled... Finally, the CD ends up with the MACABRE OMEN songs taken from their "Olympus" EP. Despite their horrible sound, these songs are GREAT and powerful, but don't expect typical Hellenic BM here. I would compare some of the parts to GODKILLER's first excellent MCD with less keyboards and more similarities with DARKTHRONE... Probably the best tracks from this album. So in conclusion I can say this is a very good UG split CD, but you may have great difficulties to get it as it was very bad distributed and limited only to 300 copies...

8 / 10

© 2003 lord pesten