Many are familiar with the section of this site, the Dark Legions Archive, that came to us as gfiles from BBSes in the 1980s, later modified for FTP, Gopher, and then web serving on the internet.

This is the oldest and longest-running metal site on the internet. You can browse the reviews here:

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

We are known for introducing the metal world to items that may have not been all that hip at the time, but were of obvious quality, so we wrote about them in an honest but reverential fashion, as we do for all great art and literature:

Stoic Death
by Desecresy
An exploration of cavernous atmospheric death metal, Desecresy descends into ambience with hypnotic riffs and expands those with both layering and contrast, creating the sensation of descent into a world beneath this one where primal forces dominate and the human psyche is reducing to the crawling animal that it is.

Ildjarn
by Ildjarn
Shock troops of the wars from beyond the end of civilization, Ildjarn embraces the feral side of existence where conflict and expansion matter more than harmony and stability. These songs pit riffs against each other to tell folkloric tales in the guise of endless combat and insurrection against presumptions, creating an atmosphere of suspension of disbelief in which we can glimpse a world beyond the moral kiosk of humanity.

Under a Funeral Moon
by Darkthrone
Nocturnal wandering in search of the essence of life found through negating the world of human social illusion and other warmth of the individualistic soul, Under a Funeral Moon takes us far from the safe and comfortable world of chrome and plastic into the dark rituals of the forest where ambiguity reigns and our choices determine what we see and can do in the future, making us lonely captains of our soul adrift in a sea of options without anything resembling a linear path.

Nespithe
by Demilich
Considered by some to be an odd album, Nespithe combines intensely patterned rhythm with martial jazz drumming and a meandering route through a circle of riffs that stops, backs up, reverses course, and then takes alternate directions through a topography of possibilities. Like uncovering a world hidden behind the corners of familiar objects, this album of surreal death metal uncovers new worlds lurking within the familiar.

Hell Awaits
by Slayer
One of the bands that — along with Hellhammer, Bathory, Sodom, and Master — contributed to the proto-underground sound that later birthed death metal and black metal, Slayer combined angular heavy metal riffing and elegant song structures bearing grandeur with the pulsing ambient energy of hardcore music, uncovering a mytho-historical view of the world in which all is metaphor, like the riffs that with protean shapes mimic the subconscious thoughts that we suppress in order to socialize and work jobs like good normies.

Morbid Visions / Bestial Devastation
by Sepultura
In the history of death metal, this early version like Morbid Angel beat out more celebrated bands to the patterning of the genre, namely riffs talking to each other across tight rhythmic structures based on the interaction of guitars with vocals serving a percussive and textural role. This liberated music from the need to follow a vocal melodic line, thrust melody and harmony into riff, and created a through-composed phrasal style of composition that told of adventures rather than cyclic through mixed emotions.

Legion
by Deicide
Explosive from the first note to the last, this war cry of blasphemy struck out against all things that restrain the human mindset to a world of peer pressure, cliques, manias, fads, trends, clubs, gangs, committees, and other adulterations of pure consciousness. Legion argues for the supremacy of evil: only by casting aside fears and embracing the nihilism and relativity of reality can we discover what is promising within it, and explore those realms where the herd fears to tread, and from which it will try to hold us back as we begin our esoteric venture into the darkness beyond the quivering glow of human civilization.

Happy listening!

Tags: Black Metal, dark legions archive, darkthrone, death metal, death metal underground, Deicide, Demilich, desecresy, Doom Metal, Grindcore, Hardcore, ildjarn, morbid angel, sepultura, slayer, Speed Metal, Thrash