Confusion Corporation - Confusion Begins demo 1994

Confusion Corporation - Confusion Begins demo I 1994
1) An Absence of Colour
2) Confuse
3) Rust Coloured Skies
4) Compassion
5) Intensified Tribulation
6) Existence

RGhost / Mediafire

I wanted to do some contributions again, this was sent by comrade grindfreak, thanks for your donations! Confusion Corporation hail from UK and made a bunch of demos which I haven't heard except for this one. And here they're performing in a genre not most familiar to me, death metal mixed with grindcore, reminding me of stuff Earache used to release. And probably still do? There are also bits and actually a general overall feeling to this that brings to mind early industrial metal acts, also from the same roster, such as Pitchshifter and Godflesh. It really moves quite a plenty around the yard instead of sitting just in the swing or making a castle in the sandbox, slow doomy moments, fast bursts, growling, screamy voice, clean vocals and other condiments aplenty. Quite interesting really, maybe I should try to get a hold of the other demos too.

Good sound, I suppose grindfreak had an original tape but for some reason included only a partial scan of the cover, judging from the Metal Archives image I compared it to. There's a little shift in sound quality on the fifth track, to better though, but in general it's good. Like I already said, it's interesting and I wouldn't mind hearing the other demos too. Not too sure how it would fare in larger portions but as a snack it's nice. Recommended for people into the umm, associated genres, other open-minded readers and the generally curious.

Antichrist / Mjölnir - Split demo 1997

Antichrist / Mjölnir - Split demo 1997
Antichrist:
1) Heimdallr
2) I Am the Diabolical Eclipse
3) Black War
4) Totentanz / Naglfar
5) Legion of Fucking Skeletons
6) In the Forest of Evil
7) Hades erwacht
8) In Ancient Hate (live)
Mjölnir:
9) Ring aus Stein
10) Altes Götterreich
11) Trollherz (live)
12) Das Sonnenrad
13) Der Übermensch
14) The Hour of... (1. demo)

Depositfiles / Rusfolder

It's Mother's Day, bitc... people, and to commemorate that I decided it prudent to post some more raw German black metal as mothers generally are women and we have already established earlier they like that. So there. It's Mjölnir again, this time teamed up with fellow Germans Antichrist. I've ripped my dub of the demo and scanned the covers I got with it, result should be decent enough soundwise.

As usual, this was another pain to figure out, not because of Mjölnir's contribution, for change, but Antichrist was tricky after the first few tracks. In the end I decided Totentanz / Naglfar being welded together and went with that. The division might still be incorrect. Antichrist is pretty chaotic stuff at times and somewhat over the place if not all and demo-Mjölnir is as expected. Unless you haven't heard it before, obviously. A track from the first demo reappears and both feature a live track too which makes me wonder if anyone happens to be sitting on some live recordings of Mjölnir and why not Antichrist too. I'm in a bit of hurry so I'll check out with this now, grab it if you were into the previous Mjölnir posts and/or vintage German bm!

Zavorash - In Odium Veritas demo 1998

Zavorash - In Odium Veritas demo II 1998
1) Intro
2) In Odium Veritas
3) The Superior Creed
4) Dreams for Ingrates
5) Human Delirium

Mega / Zippyshare

Next destination is Sweden and with the mention of Elven Witchcraft I decided to upload this, actually quite recent, rip of another EW release which has a few things in common with the previous post. This is the second demo of the Swedish band Zavorash which featured among its ranks the rather well-known master Necromorbus. At whose studio, naturally, this was also recorded. Which you can hear too. I can't help wondering if the EW boss Jānis "Morgueldar" Balodis felt dissappointed or even somewhat betrayed when he got this demo for release? You see, in the beginning and on the first demo Zavorash was heavily inspired by Tolkien (the name is taken from Black Speech) and fantasy which in the first place caught Jānis' attention and then on this demo they've pretty much dropped all that in favour of what could be called early sort of Swedish orthodox black metal. Think Ofermod, Funeral Mist, Malign and so on. He did still call this orcish war black metal or something similar on the mailorder if I remember correctly.

The sound here is obviously good, rip quality too since it was made from an original tape with moderate plays. I suppose I gave a general idea of the music already, the vocals are of the sort of deep(-ish) crooning and half-growls not uncommon to the sub-style instead of rasps and shrieks. It's catchier than the later representatives tend to be and, uh, in general ok but hasn't really ever connected with me. I can listen to it no problem and it has enough variation and all that jazz but doesn't just leave an impression like several other, even quite similar things have done. Initially when I bought it that might've been due conflicting expectations and whatnot psychological shit which then later affects my opinion? But since you're probably not saddled with such baggage feel free to enjoy this more than me, especially if the names mentioned earlier or style appeal to you.

Keep of Kalessin - Skygger av Sorg demo 1997

Keep Of Kalessin - Skygger av Sorg demo I 1997
1) Skygger av Sorg I
2) Ruiner av en Krig
3) Skygger av Sorg II

Yandex

Moving once again to Norway, still more from Henu's pile of contributions this is the first and only demo by the Norwegians Keep Of Kalessin, released by the Greek Demonion Productions, run by Alex from Macabre Omen. Thanks for the rip and scans! Nowadays KoK is quite different from what they used to be in the early days, which naturally applies to a host of their countrymates as well. At the beginning they played melodic, atmospheric even, sort of ...well, Norwegian, black metal highly influenced by fantasy themes, especially Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea-series from where the name is derived. But you could have looked that up yourselves.

All three tracks were renamed, altered and re-recorded for their debut album "Through Times of War" and this demo has been quite readily available in the inter nets anyways so I'm not going to write a novel here, not even a novella, pamphlet or any other form of short story. Let's just say that this kind of fits with the "theme" of sorts with the fantasy-oriented black/dark metal and synth music that has been present on the blog with the Elven Witchcraft releases/distributed material. It's quite enjoyable actually, in certain easy listening sort of way.

Gloomy Grim - Friendship Is Friendship, War Is War! demo 1997

Gloomy Grim - Friendship Is Friendship, War Is War! demo II 1997
1) War
2) Ashes
3) Blood
4) Reign

RGhost / Depositfiles

Back to metal, sort of at least, and yet another sending of master Sorvali's, this is Agathon's (in)famous Gloomy Grim and the second demo Friendship Is Friendship, War Is War! Geez, his naming sense did not improve by the tape, wonder what he'd called the third demo if one would've ever been made (note: there was actually a third demo, going by the rather pedestrian name "Grimoire" and released just last year!)? Gloomy Grim belonged to the same bunch of bands/projects as Soulgrind, Nomicon, Walhalla etc. and Agathon has also been a member of somewhat better known bands like Barathrum and Thy Serpent. All the name dropping and connections won't change the fact I could never take this seriously though, Agathon's naming tendencies combined with whatever track I initially heard back in '96/'97 plus the weariness I started to feel with the so-called circus synth "black" metal bands made me avoid them for the next ten years or so. Cover scans are included, as expected of Henu! Thanks for your work again.

So what sort of music does the notorious GG perform? Synth-based "black" or really dark metal which had some sort of horror concept, though that is not at all apparent on the lyrics which are really pretty straight forward antichristian dark metal, or black metal even. The horror feeling is more conveyed by the synths and music in general. A mean person might say the whole listening experience is the true source of horror but it's not as bad as my young self decided right away back in the day. Some bits are actually kind of cool but I still can't get over the certain (wrong sort of) uneasiness this tends to cause me. Agathon's voice really doesn't help either, always sounded really forced and clumsy to my ears. The programmed drums might be an issue to some as well and the synths can start to grate on larger doses. The bass sounds nice. In the end of the day it's still not coming back on my menu but perhaps there are connoisseurs of cheese who will enjoy this among the readers. Handle with care and store properly.

NYX - Repressions demo 1996

 NYX (fin) - Repressions demo 1996
1) Come on and Do It
2) Carnival
3) They Take My Town
4) NYX
5) Headwind
6) Sounds of Eternity
7) Virtual
8) I Will Control You
9) Untitled

 Zippyshare / Mediafire

And now something different again, but at least moving in somewhat alphabetical order and that is good is it not? This is the '96 demo by Finnish NYX, most likely known to the readers of this blog from these old compilations and probably nowhere else. I got this dubbed from a trader comrade back in late '96 I think and don't really know that much about the band to say much further except that they seem to have been active a few years ago releasing an album in '09 and a compilation of tracks in '10. Sadly no covers and none seem to be found presently online either. I'm not really sure if any were made to start with.

I should probably mention that this is already a very old rip, it took me ages to get back to it as I wasn't sure about the tracklisting, spelling of the band name and other such trivia. I eventually decided to ignore the minutiae until corrected and just post it. Then I forgot it lying around the old files. Good job! The issue with the tracklisting was that it seemed to have an additional track which I've then labeled as just "untitled" and that's enough about that. If you've listened to the compilations referred to earlier (Carnival appeared on Freeze 2) you might remember this is sort of electro-industrial wave-ish stuff, with trip-hop and other random-word-combinations-I-might-decide-to-drop bits in it. I don't clearly know what I am talking about. But if you enjoyed the compilations referred to and what little you heard of NYX on them this might be right up your alley. I think I need to assume a horizontal position on the couch after tonight's alcoholomantic experiments.

Mjölnir - The Hour of Lemegeton demo 1995

Mjölnir - The Hour of Lemegeton demo I 1995
1) Darklands
2) The Hour of Lemegeton
3) Hexentanz
4) The Great Destroyer
5) In the Grave
6) Jenseits der Mauer des Wahnsinns
7) The Robber
8) Morbid

Mega / 4shared

It is time for some more German black metal. This is again Mjölnir, remember the third demo I posted here? This is the first demo, which Metal Archives for some reason makes to seem like third or something, it's very clearly referred as first on the cover of the split with Antichrist and differs clearly enough from the following ones in appearance if not so much in content. Which, apparently a tradition, is a pain in the ass to figure out. I got this rip from a contributor and a copy of the cover from another person and was about to post this already when I noticed the tracklisting didn't match, the title track which reappeared on the aforementioned split was wrong length and more importantly sounded different, while the next song matched the track from the split. So it was back to the drawing board and re-dividing the tracks.

How did I succeed? I honestly can't be certain, this is pretty nightmarish as the only song I could be sure was the title one and right at the start there seems to be an untitled intro which clearly has a break before the part I decipher being "Darkland" and there are more odd instrumental bits that may be part of this song or maybe not or could be separate tracks and aaaargh I hate recordings like this! So this is just my educated guesses, I couldn't even be sure which part was the damned first side and which second. It's probably best to listen to this as a full half an hour trip instead of separate tracks as it clearly is a whole instead of a collection of single tracks.

But uncle, what is the music like, other than confusing and stress-inducing? Well, it's really quite fascinating and unorthodox, much of the metal is rather slow and ponderous rather than fast and messy like the initial burst of Darkland (once we finally get past the intro parts) tries to have you believe. The vocals are completely unintelligible croaks and rasps, which really doesn't help figuring out the songs but let's not go there again. Not that dissimilar to the third demo already posted here, to be honest. No clean vocal experiments though and everything is slightly cruder, sloppier and even less bound by common sense than the later material. If you got anything out of the previous Mjölnir post chances are you might enjoy or at least be puzzled by this one too. But if you end up hating it, hey, at least the playing time is only a third of the third demo!