Withered Garden - Watcher In The Nightsky demo 1997

Withered Garden - Watcher in the Nightsky demo 1997
1) Flame
2) Call of Stormcrow
3) Praise of Evil Rising High
4) Watcher in the Nightsky

Reuploaded

I mentioned this demo on my Halls Of Mandos post and decided to go and rip it. Turns out my memory failed me slightly, as it now sounds better than I remembered (though I'm still inclined to prefer the more direct approach of Halls demo). Atmospheric dark/black metal stuff here, quite sounding like a product of it's time. Better than the MCD that followed, I think, and the rip is decent quality too.

Throes Of Dawn - With The Northern Wind demo 1994

Throes Of Dawn - With The Northern Wind demo 1994
1) Autumn Winds
2) Outburning Sun
3) Silent Throes

I've ripped this again. See here.

Debut demo of the dark metal band Throes Of Dawn, dubbed on my tape by one of the band members (Teemu?) around 1995. I later transfered it onto another tape but I don't think that had too detrimental an effect on the quality.

Three tracks of atmospheric dark metal, quite a good effort especially for such a young band. The clean vocals make me cringe, I admit that, but so it is with many other Finnish bands as well.

Morningstar - Promotape 1994

Morningstar - Promotape 1994
1) The Eyes Of Lamia 
2) Kalevala 
3) Black Rebel

Reuploaded

Here's some more stuff from Sinister Satyr Honkonen, this time the main-project Morningstar and the 1994 promo. Three (short) songs that were latter released on the debut album "Rivendell." There were two alternative covers for the tape, Arska sent me both with the tape and I've included scans of them with the download. Not much else to say really.

Perkele - Saatanalliset Himot rehearsal/demo I 1994

Perkele - Saatanalliset Himot rehearsal demo I 1994
1) Kalevala (Morningstar cover)
2) Pagan Fire
3) Nainen Pimeydestä
4) Seductive Eyes Of A Wolf
5) It Will End...
6) Eternal Moonfog
7) Witchcraft (Morningstar cover, outro)

Depositfiles

Here's some more seldom seen material from Morningstar mastermind Ari "Sinister Satyr" Honkonen, this is the first recording of his project Perkele, started in 1994 with some German wench and evolved through very Isengard-sounding phase (the "Pohjola"-demo) to a more gothic sound ("Midsummer Murders" promo and the "Erotic Circus" album) and eventual split up. Honkonen sort of revived the project briefly as Iron Bird and released one demo under that monicker. But more of that later if I find the tape with the demo.

This tape was released in few numbers, not surprising for a rehearsal/demo and I got my copy from one of the small Finnish distros in 1995. The sound quality is not so bad, considering it is a reheasal recording, the material itself... well, it is not exactly great. Sort of pagan metal, similar to older Morningstar (the intro track and outro being Morningstar songs), two of the songs ended up on the first proper demo "Pohjola" and the rest are instrumentals or feature Lady Lammaschta's less-than-proficient vocals. It has mostly historical relevance and of course the few Perkele-fans will probably try it to hear rougher versions of "Pagan Fire" and "Nainen Pimeydestä".

Halls Of Mandos - As The Evil Wins demo 1996

Halls Of Mandos - As The Evil Wins demo 1996
1) As The Evil Wins
2) Awaken By The Winds
3) The Summoning
4) Time For A Change

4shared

The first and only release by Halls Of Mandos, a little-known Finnish black metal band that changed their name into Withered Garden after this release and then again into Sightless later on. The musical style changed as well, first into more COF and the like influenced melodic dark metal and then gradually into more death metallic sound. Anyways, this demo was still black metal, with the typical sound of Finnish demo bands of the era. I received this recording from... one of the members after I bought the Withered Garden demo and asked if he could record me the old material too. It's a bit flawed due to tape wear and can't be helped I'm afraid. Shouldn't bother people used to cassettes and tape rips too much, I suppose. I must confess that I prefer this demo to the Withered Garden material. Haven't heard Sightless yet, so no comment or comparison to that.

UPDATE: I got an original copy of the tape this summer (2010) and ripped it. The quality is a bit better than the originally posted version so I decided to upload it. 320 kbps & scan of the xeroxed cover enclosed.

Chained And Desperate - Advance Tracks promo 1995

Chained And Desperate - Advance Tracks 1995 promo tape
1) The Shapeless Stone
2) Centaurs Dance
3) Sirens Lament

Reuploaded

Sometime in 1995 I ran across an ad or flyer, don't remember which one, for a Greek band called Chained And Desperate and their 1994 demo tape. I was (and still am) very much into Greek metal and intrigued by the band's unsual name so I wrote them. I got a reply with an advance tape of three new songs which were in new direction for the band, the 1994 demo having been more death/doom. These songs on this little promo were midtempo, atmospheric pagan metal and I was very impressed with them. They recorded a little later 3 more songs for what was supposed to be a split CD with Order Of The Ebon Hand, but that didn't happen, so both bands released their parts as demos.

Chained And Desperate released a full-lenght album "Eleven Angels in a Circle" in 2000, went into hiatus and have since returned. The album can be downloaded for free on their website, check it out.

The download here is not my rip, I came across this a few years ago in Soulseek and have no idea who to credit with the rip. It's good quality so I didn't see any sense in making an inferior rip of the tape myself, so thank you, anonymous contributor. Also, there was no proper cover for this tape so again a band logo was uploaded instead.

Minotauri - Rehearsal 1995

Minotauri - Rehearsal 1995
1) I'm A Ghost
2) Shores Of My Childhood

Reuploaded

In the late 1995 I wrote a few letters with Ari "Sinister Satyr" Honkonen, the mastermind of the Finnish metallers Morningstar. Besides the letters, I sent him tapes to record some rehearsal etc. material and along with the Morningstar stuff, I got these two songs from his new project, still then called Minotaur. Since those days the name of the band changed as he added an "i" to the end (I guess he remembered the German Minotaur...) and the music evolved into traditional doom vein.

The two tracks here are a low quality rehearsal recording, but audible enough. There's some annoying tape imperfection on the second song, but I don't think it ruins the whole thing. I'm not really 100% sure how to describe the style of these songs, so I'll just give in and call them "metal" - quite comparable to latter Morningstar actually. Worth the download for the curiosity value I suppose. No covers so I just slapped on the Minotauri logo here and for the convenience I've named them as Minotauri already here.

Twin Obscenity - Revelations Of Glaaki demo 1995

 

Twin Obscenity - Revelations of Glaaki demo 1995

1) Like the Death of a Sorceress 

2) The Infernal Dance of Prince Kaleth

3) Tribute to Mortality

4) Revelations of Glaaki

 

 Reuploaded 

 

This was one of the demos that made me realize how much I loved the underground scene. It was released in a time when the last thing you'd expect to hear from Norway was death metal. Sure, there was Molested but that was that, and let's face it Molested was nothing too interesting. This, however, was pure gold. Revelations Of Glaaki... the whole thing oozed mystery and the rest of the titles only helped. This was not the viking metal you kids knew Twin Obscenity for.

I think one of my Norwegian or German tape trading comrades recorded me this one, so we have to use the Metal Archives image. All these tracks were released on the delayed Head Not Found debut album, but I think these versions still merit a listen as they, at least to this writer's ears sound different. It is a definite listen for anyone into Lovecraftian darker metal, even while it's not directly borrowing from the master himself. Nothing viking or Norse here, just the stench of dust-covered, forgotten and long forsaken tomes of weird tales and bizarre invocations. Absolutely recommended.

 

ACHTUNG! 01-02-2011 - New, improved version of the rip uploaded! If you have the old one you might want to download this instead. It's ripped from the same dub but done better. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Hödur - The Majesty demo 1995

Hödur - The Majesty demo 1995
1) The Shadows
2) Master
3) Eternal Night
4) Wilczyca z SS

This version discontinued. See the more recent post for a new link with full cover scans.

This piece of raw Polish black metal was mostly left unknown if not for their 1997 release of the demo tape/cassette album "Salve Satanas" and the little known advance tape with three songs from that release.

A thing for debate was the name of the band: I saw them written most of the time on the tape trading lists as Hödur (see the latter logo for more proof) but the established name seems to be the more convinient Hodur. EDIT: Ok, I got a better rip of "Salve Satanas" with full cover scans and it is, as I thought, HÖDUR.

Bad sound, raw-as-hell, Polish old school black metal armageddon is the word here and this seems to be a hard-to-find release. My version, unfortunately, is your another dub of a dub of a dub of a maybe original thing from the old tape trading days. And this tape rip of mine is good compared to the last demo/tape-album that circled around. The last track is hilarious, reference to the "classic" "Ilsa - She-Wolf Of the SS" movie. Very, very recommendable to the old-school, raw-as-fuck enthusiastics and the politically incorrect.

14-03-2009 - Updated the Mediafire link with a .rar that has spelling corrected to Hödur from Hodur. Didn't bother with the Uploaded.to link.
31-03-2009 - Fuckloaded.to link dead. Annoyed. Replaced with Badongo and with the corrected .rar
14-05-2010 - Noticed Badango link is dead. Removed. I received full cover scan for this a little while ago, I'm going to rip this again, pack with the full covers and upload a new link so stay tuned.