LPCDreissues: Looking forward to the past

Label: Black Mark Production

Bathory’s debut album is one of the most important early documents of extreme metal. Recorded in Stockholm in 1984, it takes the speed and roughness of Venom-style black metal and pushes it into something colder, harsher and more single-minded. The production is primitive, the performances are feral, and the songs feel as if they were built to strip heavy metal down to its most violent essentials.

What still makes the album so powerful is its atmosphere. Tracks such as Hades, Reaper, Sacrifice and In Conspiracy With Satan are short, crude and direct, but they helped establish a language that countless black and extreme metal bands would later develop further. This Black Mark Production LP edition presents the album in its classic eight-track form.

1. Hades
2. Reaper
3. Necromansy
4. Sacrifice

1. In Conspiracy With Satan
2. Armageddon
3. Raise The Dead
4. War