Azag-Thotch - Ritual demo 2002

Azag-Thotch - Ritual demo 2002
1) Прелюдия ночи
2) Cult of Death
3) Порывы холодного ветра
4) Преждевременное погребение
5) Реквием

Reuploaded

Recent posts have been very metal, haven't they? Let's have some belarussian dark ambient to balance that. I bought this tape pretty much on a whim and it does have sort of cool cover drawing too, does it not? Could be a black metal demo! I know little about the performers Belphegor and Sobnack, or label Wauckalack Prod., which seems to have released before this black metal; two demos by the still active Wackhanalija and a split tape of the nsbm bands Totenkopf and Hebrewdead. And a video (!) titled "The Forest" which I admit makes me very curious. At least Belphegor plays also in W and H, Sobnack probably too, under a different alias. I had to do a slight edit to the rip as the third track had a sudden burst of noise which I believe was not supposed to be there, most likely a screw up at some point of dubbing the tape, whatever the case I eliminated it. There are still some brief blippy noises in the last two tracks which I apparently did not prune off. Try to bear with them.

This is a pretty long tape, easily passing into album length. The first three tracks are in the standard 4-5 minute comfort zone while the last two are long and longer. The insert, which also provided most of what I know about Wauckalack prod's roster, describes this as dark ambient and I suppose this is the label I'll put this under. There are plenty of vocals too, as well as elements like percussion that give it a much more active nature than what most might expect from dark ambient releases. Closer to darkwave stuff at times really and some parts come close enough to dungeon synth to justify tagging that too. And to make people look. No but really, the afore-mentioned third track has that vibe aplenty and just listen to the state-of-the-art synth sound! I mentioned vocals, they're mostly whispers and black metal rasps which I find acceptable choices for this sort of music too. I'm not so wild about the first two faster and shorter bits (though the somewhat erratic pounding bits in "Cult of Death" are neat) but the dreary slower ones are more to my liking. It's another of those tapes that's both awful and awesome; terrific and terrible; ...I can't come up with a third similar pair of words... well, you know what I mean, almost equal mix of both components. Should be an interesting listen to at least part of the congregation. By the way, the first Wacky demo has quite similar sound to this, now that I've got it playing.