Noitavalkea - Demo 99

Noitavalkea - Demo I 1999
1) Noitain sapatti
2) Ensimmäinen tuleminen
3) Infernal Legions

Zippyshare / Yandex

For your Friday night's pleasure (or not), Velkaarn and Grev present Noitavalkea from Finland with their only demo titled simply "Demo 99" and this was a request. It is also another link in a mini-series of Stålhammar and affiliated releases we had going around the end of last year, this tape was sth-026 and despite being based in Siuntio, where I assume Riena whose gig this mainly was lived, I count it firmly among the cold HVNK kvlts. Easy when it was recorded in Hellkult Studio, produced and mixed by Narqath who also wrote the lyrics and had Kalma (Oath, formerly of Azaghal and a ton of related projects) on sessions drums. Brother Grev also provided a cover scan, thanks as always!

Looking at the seven minute playtime of this three song demo it'd be easy to assume they go for punkier sort of black metal or even grind, but the first track is just an intro really and the two others fast and slightly chaotic black metal. Not too far from old Azaghal to be honest. Raw, but that's given and the sound is still decent enough to distinguish things from other things instead of wall of noise or so. As often happens these days, this sounds better now than on the initial listen. Though the third track is pretty awful, did it stick out this badly when I last listened to this? And who do I think can answer that? But the intro and second track are pretty good so that puts this in the fabled okayish category of stuff. Naturally you want to check this out if you have an obsession with the old HVNK stuff, collect Finnish demo recordings or really, really like your black metal fast, raw and somewhat generic.