Satanic Blasphemies

While Necrophobic's first full-length appeared in 1993, in keeping with well-established practice for any number of metal bands, black or otherwise, they'd already released a number of earlier recordings via demo tapes and other channels -- and just as inevitably, over the years they'd been bootlegged, file-shared, auctioned on eBay, and more besides. Satanic Blasphemies puts together those efforts to make a nine-song album that's at once perfectly entertaining and, unsurprisingly, exactly what it sounds like -- a young, late-'80s/early-'90s Swedish metal band loving their influences, especially from over in Norway, and not fully finding their own feet yet. That said, for sheer completeness it's fascinating to hear the earliest, near-completely Slayer-indebted tracks from the 1989 Slow Asphyxiation demo, featuring a trio lineup with vocals by original bassist Stefan Zander, who left the group soon thereafter. The rough-and-ready production emphasizes David Parland's heavily flanged guitar parts, turning in near-drones hovering over the mix in between the occasional solo, while Joakim Sterner's drums echo and clatter in the back. The Unholy Prophecies demo from two years later is an audible step forward -- not for nothing was this the first time they worked with longtime engineer Tomas Skogsberg, balancing out some of the murk in favor of crisper, hackle-raising aggression on the part of Parland -- while the guest appearance of Crematory's Stefan Harrvik on vocals gave the group some focus. The lengthy "Sacrificial Rites" provides a strong enough start (Parland's mid-song breaks are a monster) but the title track, a brawling rampager, is the winner here, the band's first truly great song. The Call EP from 1992 completes the disc, Harrvik once again standing in vocally while new regular bassist Tobias Sidegard debuted, with strong songs like "The Ancients Gate" pointing the way forward to the following year's The Nocturnal Silence. ~ Ned Raggett