Beherit - Day of Darkness (split with Impaled Nazarene)
Review: This live recording from the heyday of Finnish black metal captures two bands at the top of their game for the first part of their careers. In the waning days of the wild frontier of black metal, before it was solidified as a concept and before Peter Tagtgren's The Abyss and Marduk's Opus Nocturne formalized the style like a paint-by-numbers book, these bands were finishing what they had initially set out to do -- create unique voices of black metal -- and were just before they began to contemplate too deeply what to do next. As a result, this is a ripping live performance full of conviction from Beherit, with remarkably few errors considering how quickly these songs are bashed out. Material from the first collection of demos, The Oath of Black Blood, and two tracks from the triumphant Drawing Down the Moon (which would emerge over a year later later) combine in a mix which reveals the continuity between both. Recorded on August 23, 1991, this bootleg captures the frenetic unconquered nature of black metal in its relative infancy. The uncanny ability of Beherit to spot rhythms which are as natural as the pulse of blood, the erratic pace of prey, or the gathering of clouds propels this material forward with an insistence toward paying attention to the intensity of life, which more than anything else can function to awaken the modern sleepwalker to the possibilities of their own time, when they give up on safety ("good") and look for adventure ("evil") instead.
1. Grave Desecration
2. Six Days With Sadistic Slayer 
3. Fallen Souls
4. Sodomatic Rites
5. Nocturnal Evil
6. The Oath Of Black Blood
7. Satanas (Sarcofago cover)
