At The Gates - Live at Jaxx, Springfield VA 03.06.1996

At The Gates - Live at Jaxx, Springfield VA, USA 3rd June 1996
1) The Flames of the End
2) Slaughter of the Soul
3) Terminal Spirit Disease
4) Cold
5) The Swarm
6) Blinded by Fear
7) Suicide Nation
8) Under a Serpent Sun
9) Need

Reuploaded

Swedish death metallers At The Gates don't probably need much introducing. This here gig (3rd June or 6th March, I've never checked to be sure but I think 3rd June) in the States is a part of some tour (with Morbid Angel headlining) so they only had a bit over half an hour to play. Naturally this limited the amount of songs considerably and they play only tracks off the last album and 2 from "Terminal Spirit Disease" which is a minor issue, but perfectly understandable. As you might've guessed, I got this through tape trading.

You might wonder why I used the old At The Gates logo as they only play "new" songs? Well, simply enough the later logo looks extremely lame. Fortunately (to me at least) the material is still enjoyable. Comes with a good enough sound too so pick this up if you like At The Gates (expect if you're an "only old albums are real"-purist), (new wave of) Swedish death metal... oh well you know if you want this.

Horna - Unmixed Advance Tracks 1998

Horna - Unmixed Advance Tracks 1998
1) Yhdeksän Yö (Part I)
2) Yhdeksän Yö (Part II)
3) Kun Jumalan Sydän On Murskattu

Reuploaded

Horna should be a familiar name to those who listen to Finnish black metal. So without further ado here is a rip of the unmixed advance tracks for "Haudankylmyyden Mailla" album. This was not an official promo of any sort, I think the guys dubbed these to give some people a taste of the new material and that kind of spread out to the tape trading circuit. I got my dub of this from a Dutch friend of mine in 1998 or 1999, it was very good quality, possibly a 2nd generation dub or so. Maybe he even got it directly from the band, I never asked.

As you notice the song "Yhdeksän Yö" is here as two separate tracks. I like the sound on these versions actually better than the finished album, I wish I had the whole as an unmixed version. Recommended!

Mayhem - Live Baroeg, Rotterdam 17.04.1999

Mayhem (Norway) - Live at the Baroeg, Rotterdam Netherlands 17th April 1999
1) Intro Tape
2) I Am Thy Labyrinth
3) Freezing Moon
4) Intro to Carnage
5) Carnage
6) From the Dark Past
7) Symbols of Bloodswords
8) Drum solo / View from Nihil
9) Fall of Seraphs
10) Pure Fucking Armageddon
11) Silvester Anfang
12) Deathcrush

Reuploaded

Another Mayhem live bootleg from Maniac-era, but this one is a notable curio as it does not feature the man himself. I don't know who is filling in for him but as you can (barely) make out from the short speech titled here as "Intro to Carnage", he couldn't make it and well that's about what I could gather from that rant.

UPDATE: I've been informed that it is Necrobutcher talking in the aforementioned piece and Blasphemer is filling in for Maniac! Thanks for the info! Blasphemer does ok in my opinion, on some songs actually better than M, like on "Freezing Moon." He's not very talky overall which is not a big miss. As usual, "Pure Fucking Armageddon" is a fucking torso and this time "I Am Thy Labyrinth" gets the shortening treatment too.

After the introductions I'll move into the catch: the sound is pretty much shit. I remember that several of the old bootlegs I had from the Baroeg gigs of various bands suffered from poor sound so I believe the venue is "challenging" to put it nicely. The guitar is buried under the drums, often very overbearing bass and the vocals. Naturally the sound quality also changes a few times, probably due the person moving a bit. It's not the worst I've heard but takes certainly a hardened listener to bear and enjoy, your mileage will probably vary here. So consider yourself warned. For Mayhem-maniacs, black metal live collectors, historians and masochists.

Draconis Sanguis - Gloria Draconis demo 1999

Draconis Sanguis - Gloria Draconis demo 1999
1) Chapter I - Chaos of Fate
2) Chapter II - Shadows of the Past
3) Chapter III - Under a Spell
4) Chapter IV - Gezeichnet für die Ewigkeit
5) Chapter V - Sword of Wrath
6) Chapter VI - Verbranntes Land
7) Chapter VII - Der Schwur
8) Gloria Draconis - The Final Chapter
9) Epilogue - Schicksal

Reuploaded

German stuff this time. Sounds a lot like black metal but isn't, this is black metal based fantasy metal and a concept demo to boot. Sounds like melodic later 90s bm strewn with some awkward sounding clean singing (reminds me a bit of early Darkwoods My Betrothed actually) and spoken narrative bits which make me only a little bit uncomfortable. But those spoken parts are always hard to pull off without sounding silly. The grating main vocal does ok.

I ordered this demo with a bunch of others from Elven Witchcraft, who specialized in fantasy/mythology-oriented stuff. Déjà vu, I think I've written about EW earlier so I'm not going to babble anymore, download or don't. Recommended for fantasy enthusiasts, fans of melodic dark metal and curio seekers.

Nargothrond - Moria C-LP 1999

Nargothrond (Portugal) - Moria Cassette LP 1999
1) Middle-Earth's 13th Age
2) Ungolianth
3) Black Realm Of Morgoth
4) Orcish Steel
5) Golden Wyrm Of Angband
6) In The Ruins Of Nargothrond
7) Under The Red-Eye's Banner
8) The Fires Of Gorgoroth
9) Moria
10) The Witch-King Of Angmar
11) The One Ring (Interlude)
12) Return Of The Black Foe
13) Pussywhipped (bonus track - S.O.D. cover)

Depositfiles

Something a little different this time - the cassette album of Portugal's Nargothrond, side project of Firstborn Evil, later known as The Firstborn, members. As you can see from the titles above, this is very Tolkien-influenced material and based on black metal. However, don't dive in expecting material in the vein of Summoning, like the bonus cover track might hint the approach is quite different.

I remember it being referred to as "orcish battle metal" or something on similar lines - it's noisy, chaotic, brutal and warlike on first take and I must admit I was far from overjoyed when I got the tape in 1999. I was (and still am) a big fan of Summoning and Tolkien too and was at least checking out just about anything so themed. Now as I listen to it after a long time I find myself enjoying the punkish yet still very metal racket. There is more than at first assaults the ear so this was a nice re-discovery. Not trve but fun listen, why not give it a try?

Ecclesia Satani - NS Satan

Ecclesia Satani - NS Satan CD 2001
1) NS Satan I
2) NS Satan II
3) NS Satan III
4) NS Satan IV
5) NS Satan V
6) NS Satan VI
7) NS Satan VII
8) NS Satan VIII

Depositfiles

More "monumental black metal with NS ideology" from the Polish Ecclesia Satani in the form of their only full-lenght released by Under the Sign of Garazel in limited edition of 555 copies. I got this at the same time I ordered the tape, uploaded here, from Pakana distro I think. The CD covers contain no tracklisting, just stuff written in Polish which is among the many languages I haven't mastered yet, so I just titled the songs NS Satan I-VIII. There were 88 tracks, but tracks 8-87 were just blanks to get the number and the last one (here VIII) is a short outro bit.

The description monumental applies well here with most proper tracks ticking well over 5 minutes in lenght, II taking the cake at intimidating 25 mins! The music is again keyboard-heavy, from the symphonic school of black metal and this time the sound quality is obviously better than on the demo. Give it a shot if you're not put off by their ideology. Coverscan included for your Polish-reading pleasure.

Moonsorrow - Tämä Ikuinen Talvi demo 1999

Moonsorrow - Tämä Ikuinen Talvi demo 1999
1) Taistelu Pohjolasta
Osa I: Luo Veljien
Osa II: Punaisen Lumen Valtakunta
Osa III: Jäisten Järvien Kimalteessa
2) Vihreällä Valtaistuimella
3) Talvi
4) Luopion Veri
5) Kuun Suru

Reuploaded

I ripped my tape of the second Moonsorrow demo - you have heard of Moonsorrow, haven't you? - some time ago and decided to upload the rip as most rips around seem to be from the CD version released by Sagitarius in 2001 which was remastered and partially re-recorded (vocals and some other part I can't remember for now). So it's quite different from this original version. I don't think I need to go lenghts to explain Moonsorrow's music, but I'll mention the demos are closer to old Enslaved and slightly more black metallish than viking metal. Good stuff.