Ordo Draconis - When the Cycle Ends demo 1997

Ordo Draconis - When the Cycle Ends demo I 1997
1) A Crimson Dawn
2) Fading Daylight
3) The Gloaming of the Haunted Eve
4) The Nightwanderer

Mediafire

This demo is another of master Sorvali's sendings so thanks to him for the rip + scans and it's the first tape of the Dutch band Ordo Draconis, often seen labeled as black metal but that's not really right as this is straight out fantasy metal with dark/black metal sound. This is also one of those tapes I keep thinking was released by Elven Witchcraft but nope, it was distributed by EW (among others) and released by the band themselves.

The demo consists of four tracks, of which the second one is a short instrumental. Sound is quite good, strong and mostly clear though it does get a bit clogged at the faster bits with vocals on. According to the covers the music was recorded live which certainly contributes to the energy of the performance. Melodic, at times symphonic even, dark fantasy metal, I suppose you know the sort, with atmospheric slower breaks, guitar leads, raspy black metal vocals and some female voices provided by Femke from Gandillion. The main vocalist/bassist Moloch apparently is nowadays in Hell Militia, as a side note. This is quite well performed and I remember liking this back when it was released but it's not really my cup of coffee these days. Though like tea it's not really that repelling or anything, a bit is fine every now and then, but I prefer more bitter, black beverage. Give them a listen if you're into melodic and atmospheric metal or interested in EW-associated material, I'm off to get me some coffee.

Fimbulvetr - ...bis die Welt vergeht demo 2003

Fimbulvetr - ...bis die Welt vergeht demo I 2003
1) In Betrachtung des letzten Sonnenfalls
2) Katharsis
3) Triumph des Todes
4) In Stahlgewittern
5) Gimle
6) Fidelity Shall Triumph (Thor's Hammer cover)

Yandex

How about another German black metal band, with a name inspired by Norse mythology but slightly more recent? Better say yes because that's what you are getting today. This is the first demo by Fimbulvetr and another contribution by brother Baldemar, thank you for the rip and scan!

Let's get to business without further ado. Six tracks for almost half an hour and as shorter instrumental tracks 1 and 5 are serving as intro and outro (sixth is a cover track so not part of the demo "proper") this leaves three quite long songs as the main part of the demo. Not as long as the over ten minute slabs on the second demo but well over six minutes each still. The sound is raw and slightly low as well as favouring the right channel. At first I meant to adjust it a bit but then scrapped that plan, people might be able to adjust the volume by themselves. Despite being somewhat later recording than most on this blog this does sound remarkably like 90's German black metal demos did. So if you dig that sound, or raw black metal with drawn out, somewhat crude songs and a generally rough performance this might be for you.

Mjölnir - Midgard, erwache! demo 1996

Mjölnir - Midgard, erwache! demo III 1996
1) Ase heißt ewig mein Vater
2) Toten für Wotan
3) Walpurgisfeuer
4) Der große Gott Pan
5) Midgard, erwache!
6) Donar in Trudheim
7) Mein ist der Thron
8) Ich bin der Drache
9) Rückkehr nach Niflheim
10) Elben Macht (Toten für Wotan II)
11) Die Kunde aus ferner Zeit II
12) Endlose Hymne an die Abendröte

Rusfolder / Depositfiles

Today, March 8th, was International Women's Day and I thought it'd be nice to somehow celebrate that. So I thought to myself, "what do women like" and that's easy: raw 90's black metal, especially German, Polish und so weiter. Probably other stuff too but let's not go there. So here's some Deutsch Mjölnir, the third demo "Midgard, erwache!" ripped from my (dubbed) copy and including a scan of the xeroxed cover. Quality should be decent enough, picture and soundwise.

This is a long demo and I mean really long, it's a bit over 90 minutes and that's honestly too much already. If you've heard the band's only album from '98, or the fourth demo "Walpurgisfeuer" (which should be pretty easy to find), you possibly expect something similar here. While the album and the demo are kind of a mixture of raw and symphonic black metal elements this is a much cruder take on the form though easy enough to recognize as the same band. The first song is a long, rather epic piece with clean voices, resembling viking-era Bathory to degree while the second one is faster and more aggressive with militant, lifeless machine gun percussion and generally nsbm-vibe on it. The melodic strumming over the mess creates a bizarre feeling. Third song is somewhere between the first two, combining the slow pace of the first with the raw voice and aesthetic of the second track. Fourth song is the longest of the metal tracks and also combines the elements in similar fashion to the third track.

The three long ambient tracks 6, 9 and 12 were written by Thursenheim whoever he may be and my division of the tracks here differs from the interpretation of the Metal Archives contributor as I ended the title track right where the metal ends and had all the ambient that follows, pauses and all, as "Donar in Trudheim" while they had included part of it as outro to "Midgard, erwache!" and I'm obviously right here. Actually I'd like to revise my earlier statement, as the presence of the long synth tracks breaks the demo into more easily digested parts it doesn't feel too long after all. The tracks are of fitting enough aesthetic and length to warrant the dungeon synth tag for the post, I think. It's easy to write this off as one of those crappy B-division demos but it's quite fascinating and more than that. Give it some (ok, quite a lot) of your time and it might reward you. Or you might end up annoyed at me and having wasted an hour and a half of your life. Choose wisely, I've a nap to take.

Valgrind - Pakkasen lapsi demo 2002

Valgrind - Pakkasen lapsi demo I 2002
1) Pakkasen lapsi
2) Musta vesi
3) Pohjola

Mediafire / Zippy

Let's do another Finnish item and another one of master Sorvali's contributions. This is Valgrind from Helsinki who made (at least) two demos before sort of vanishing and this is the first one (that I know of). If the cover scans Henu enclosed are really all there was they weren't too keen on sharing information, I presume the song titles were written on the cassette or something like that. Well, at least the cover's unusually colourful.

Three songs which are all quite epic length at well over six minutes each and they seem to be either pretty directly inspired by my contributor's band or drawing from same sources. This probably gets labeled viking metal all around even though the lyrics are not about Norse topics, I'd rather call this heathen metal. Unfortunately the tape seems to have a bit of wear in the beginning of the first song, happily this does not carry on for too long. Other than that the sound and rip quality are good. The second track is the slowest and gloomiest of the lot while the last one is again faster and oddly enough the catchiest despite the longest playtime. What else should I say... well, it's quite a good listen but I can't help comparing this to Moonsorrow in my head which is somewhat distracting. Anyways, I suppose this can be recommended quite safely to fans of theirs and heathen/viking metal enthusiasts in general. I'd like to hear the second demo too.

Realm of Frost - Rehearsal Track '96

Realm of Frost - Rehearsal track 1996
1) Through the Valley of Frost

Yandex / RGhost

Metal, as promised, and today I've once again teamed up with brother Grev to fulfill a request by sister Borderline, this is the single unreleased (sort of) rehearsal track by Finnish black metal band Realm of Frost. And yeah, I took my sweet time getting to it, I know. Thanks to Grev for dubbing this to me and as there's obviously no cover art for this I've just used the band pic from the '96 demo.

This track does not appear on the demo, adding the total of Realm of Frost songs to respectable three. I don't know if this was recorded before or after the demo and to be honest not much more either related to the band I hadn't already mentioned here. This song is shorter than the either of the demo tracks but not much and the rehearsal recording has a pretty good sound. Quite clear, with the percussion as most dominating element, vocals and strings somewhat falling back. Varying tempos and a slow, atmospheric part in the latter half. Would've been interesting to hear another demo from them but looks like this is all we got. Pick this up if you liked the demo or enjoy collecting somewhat obscure 90's Finnish stuff.

Apeiron - Stardust demo 1997 [updated]

Apeiron - Stardust demo III 1997
1) Posting on Streams of Anti-Matter
2) Pan's Journey to the Cosmic Void

Mega

Haven't I seen this before might be what a lot of you are thinking now. And yes, you have, here. Unfortunately that time around we were operating under misinformation as comrade Running Wild pointed out, a friend of his owning an actual copy of the tape. See below for an image of it, you can (somewhat barely) see the tracklisting there.

This is why we really need full cover scans, readable ones, for everything. The music is naturally still the same, I just divided it into the two tracks. There was even an obvious pause which I did notice when listening to this initially but for all I knew the tracklisting was "Stardust". Well, better to have things cleared up later than not ever, please download this again if you got the original version and if you didn't grab this the first time around, well, do that now if you enjoy "cosmic light ambient" or are a fan of Dreamlord's other work. Next post is going to be something else than ambient, this time for reals!

Lunar Womb - Planets demo I 1996

Lunar Womb - Planets demo I 1996
1) The Labyrinths of Ktonor
2) As the Winter Comes...
3) Night Towers

Mediafire / Rusfolder

Hollow Myths

Sunday's chill out zone strikes back. And here is the much discussed first Lunar Womb demo, recorded with the slightly larger line-up of both Sorvali cousins and featuring Kharadrai who provides the lyrics and voice on the first track. My thanks to Henu for sharing this after a bit of hesitation, you did the right thing as there are plenty of people out there who wanted to hear this. Cover scans enclosed.

I've warned a few times that this is a very different entity from the second demo. If you look at the big picture you could say they're more under the same umbrella of ambient music but this is a bit more ...unrefined gathering of experiments. The first track is really, really long and very repetitive as well as the only one to have lyrics, like earlier mentioned, and vocals which (fortunately in my opinion) are quite sunken in the background. Despite going on for far longer than necessary (over twenty minutes) it's sort of grown on me and brings about a certain dreamlike state. Or I might've dozed off for a bit. Second song is shorter and more in the traditional instrumental interlude or even dungeon synth field, with some folkish touches and a hefty serving of repetition. Nice. Third song is again a long one and it's a quite minimalistic ambient piece that seems somewhat monotonous at first but has more subtly going on than seemed. Not bad at all once you get over the possible initial "shock" and expectations the second demo might have set up. Recommended for friends of ambient music, collectors of Meat Hook Prods stuff and other curious passers-by. Next will be metal. Or something different.

UPDATE: Discovered, to my slight surprise, that Hollow Myths of USA had released a CD compiling this and "The Astral Grief" - I can't say anything definite about the release itself but looks promising. Apparently both were remastered too. See link above.