Infernal Destruction - Death, Violence, Satanism demo 1996

Infernal Destruction - Death, Violence, Satanism demo 1996
1) Satan's Anarchy
2) Song of Satan
3) End of God
4) Christ Is Drunk

Mega / Sendspace

It's been a bit quiet at the Coven this month as I have been preoccupied with other things. But to show we're not completely on a summer vacation here's a curious contribution sent by master Mihkel Kleis (you might remember him from the Messier items of the other year) a little while ago. And this should be pretty obscure again, a demo tape by Tartu's short-lived (1996-97) Infernal Destruction. He found the tape in a thift store among a pile of other demos and got curious, to our benefit. Scans of the covers are included and the rip quality is very good.

The music here sounds... unique. It's black metal, sure, but more like old Venom, first album Bathory and such rather than the peers of their era, Scandinavian or Estonian. The extremely lo-fi but clear and crispy "production" brings also to my mind some German stuff like Siren or Sacrifice Slaughtered Jesus. But this has more punky vibe to it and once again the enthusiasm level is much higher than skills. The guitar distortion is raw and strange, drums extremely bizarre and stripped down, but definitely played by human hand. Vocals are as crude as the rest. There is certain attractiveness to their cooking that really even should not be there but just happens. I should probably drop Sacrilegeous here also as a reference, though these are younger, eager men fumbling about. Fascinating.

Mihkel managed to get in touch with Sven Reimaa who was credited on the covers by his full name and got further information that enabled him to reach Satanizer who apparently still is active, not with metal though. He had played in a few other bands between 1997 and 2002. Apparently this was recorded in an apartment with a dictaphone, considering that the sound is quite good! Mihkel wanted to know what kind of equipment they used for recording and here's what Satanizer told (in rough translation): "...It is possible that at that moment I didn't have proper guitar amp and instead I played directly through home stereo and for distortion there was an old soviet tape recorder where turning up the recording volume caused the effect of overamplification. But maybe I already had Peavey 10w trans amp and DOS FX58 Metal Maniac pedal. The "drum set" was nothing but two so called pioneer drums made of saheet metal and pot lids for cymbals" - which does explain a lot! Gotta love their ingenuity. He also asked how many copies were made, after all the demo had full lyrics on sleeve and was dubbed on exact length tape, instead of standard TDK, Maxell or whatever. Satanizer replied there were about 20 copies made and mostly spread among friends, never really advertised or distributed. It was played once in radio though - in Raadio 2 metal show "Metallion" hosted by Enrico Kaljurand with whom our contributor used to trade with. So there, this is obviously for people into rarities, lo-fi enthusiasts, collectors of Baltic obscura and maybe even for people into punk. Thanks again to Mihkel for both the contribution and the detective work!