Bewitched - Hellspell demo '95

Bewitched - Hellspell demo I 1995
1) Triumph of Evil
2) Deathspell
3) The Witches Plague
4) Burnin' Heaven

Zippyshare / Mediafire

Let's kick off this week with some energetic black/thrash metal fra Sverige, sent by our brother Fenrirsson along with other rips months ago. Bewitched should be a familiar name to people into blackened thrash metal or explorers of Osmose's back catalogue. They started out as a side project by folks from bands like Throne of Ahaz, Ancient Wisdom, Naglfar and Katatonia, eventually changing members and outliving some of the parent bands (well, Throne of Ahaz mainly but I'm pretty salty about that) with five albums and some EPs released over a ten year period. Let's not forget they nicked the band name from the older, already established Chilean band who in the end outdid them in longevity and number of releases. Can't comment on the quality as I'm not familiar with full discographies of either. Where was I? Right, this was the only demo and as F's rip was made from a dub we make do with cover images found on the net, mainly M.A. and Demo Archives.

Even though the band got progressively sillier (and me more and more fed up with bands picking up the retro "old school" sound in the mid-late 90s) this demo is quite raw, old style black metal mixed with thrash rather than just straight up black/thrash. The guitar sound is razor sharp, clear and biting, cold even and vocals harsh shrieks and screams. It's more like old Bathory rather than say, Destruction or Slayer which I'm fine with. Drums are again buried in the background but it's fine as the guitars are the spotlight here. All four songs wound up re-recorded on the '96 debut album, which is pretty good too. I think I'll have to give it a listen next. Give this demo a go even if you've heard the later Bewitched albums and disliked them, it's a different beast. Not like lion versus alligator different, more like... a dingo vs wolf different?