BEHEMOTH recorded 3 demos in the beginning of their career. the first one was just a rehearsal tape recorded in 1992 called "Endless damnation", then came the famous "The return of the Northern moon" demo released by Pagan records (at the time the band's style was very influenced by HELLHAMMER / VENOM), and finally the last demo tape they made was "from the pagan vastlands" in 1994 (also out on Pagan records). This is the CD edition of this demo, made by Pagan records. it presents 6 BEHEMOTH songs and a MAYHEM cover track ("Deathcrush"). These songs are good, mid-tempo & melodic, the band really wants to find its style because it's here very different from the one on "The return..." but you can feel there's been a great influence of IMMORTAL's "Diabolical fullmoon mysticism" CD on Nergal at thi time (he was the one who wrote most of the songs). Just listen to the vocals on "thy winter kingdom" and you'll understand what I mean. Well, this is not a bad CD, I could even say I prefer listening to this one rather to the last one but this is not especially the best stuff recorded by BEHEMOTH. If you really want to know the best from the band, buy the fantastic following CD and MCD ("Sventevith..." & "And the forests dream eternally"), this is really "early" BEHEMOTH, but at least it showed a great potential and it revealed this band as a GREAT polish BM act.

7.5 / 10

© 2003 lord pesten