Nocturnal Feast - Hymn to Darkness demo '92

Nocturnal Feast - Hymn to Darkness demo I 1992
1) Intro: Live Eva
2) Ave Satanas
3) Enter the Eternal Night
4) Ancient Gods
5) Gates of Wisdom
6) The Gathering
7) Outro: The Waves of Acheron

Mega / Sampo

I'm behind schedule due unexpected "sick leave" but let's not dwell on that and rather push onward, to more old and moldy Finnish metal. This is Nocturnal Feast's only demo from '92, the band would gain much more notoriety under the banner of Black Dawn and survives today calling themselves (The) True Black Dawn with an album out on World Terror Committee. I know rips of this demo have been circulating around before but after having read their entry on Pirunkehto and recalling seeing this tape among the cassettes donated by Jukka from Curse ...wow, over six years ago?! Shit, I've even kept them in the same plastic bag all this time. Where was I? Yeah, so, remembered had the tape and decided to rip it. Here we go. I think his copy is original, sure the cover is somewhat sloppily xeroxed, but that hardly was uncommon at the time and the tape is a blackened-with-marker-pen type of affair with program repeating on both sides and something else dubbed after the demo as people were wont to do. I've discovered many a strange thing that way. More relevant than the authenticity is the content which we discuss next.

So if you're not familiar with old Black Dawn stuff, it was black/death metal hybrid, or Satanic death metal or evil milk metal as their old flyer described it (true story). Now that I checked, I've posted that flyer earlier. How convenient! Actually, seeing that I've posted pretty much all of old Black Dawn material you'd sort of had to either consciously avoid it or have jumped on board recently in which case welcome and please start from here and then proceed to other items in proper order.

The sound of the demo is very good, which is not really surprising if you consider this was recorded in a proper grown ups' studio and not one of those 4-tracker-in-rehearsal-room/garage-hey-lets-call-this-necrocatacomb-studio-awesome-idea-you-guys -things. Music leans more heavily on death metal here so the ratio might be like 75% death 25% black... or perhaps even more? Voice varies between deeper death growls and hoarse, raspy half-shriek half-yells with the growling being slightly more dominant of the two elements. Ever so slightly. There's also some whispers and generally good variation on the main forms. All five actual songs are quite short and simple affairs though tempos do alternate between faster, intense bursts of aggression and heavier, slower, bludgeoning passages. Enter the Eternal Night is the shortest of the lot at just over 1½ minutes while Ave Satanas almost makes it to three minutes. I also like the intro and outro bits. Ok, I think that's enough text for this time, coming up next even more black/death metal. Let's make this a black/death month!