The Aeon of the Angelslaying Darkness

Bought this boxset from an acquaintance who happened to be the founding member and guitarist of Kuala Belait’s death metal band Grotesque for a whopping BND$200. That is a lot in local currency. Deal was made and I bagged home the goodies. Was it ever worth the price? I will tell you what I think about this compilation.

To be honest, I am not really a huge fan of compilation releases. Half of the time, the tracks are taken directly from a band’s current and back catalogue. In my opinion, what makes a good compilation should have consisted of previously unreleased tracks, alternate takes or B-sides, cover songs, remixes and live recordings never-before heard anywhere, not even in bootleg releases. Nevertheless, the bulk of the materials for this boxset by Archgoat dated back to their demo days combined with the standard cuts, two of which are taken from Whore of Bethlehem while one remaining track is coming from The Light-Devouring Darkness. The latter is a good thing because if you were to have random tracks from the band’s full length, I might as well just create my own .mp3 mix and set Foobar to shuffle the tracks at random.

The focus will be on older materials. First of all, we get to travel back in time with the privilege to hear how Archgoat sounded like in their early years. The summation of sound quality on Jesus Spawn is truly mastered to the max. You can definitely hear the results from studio limiter being dialed all the way beyond -3 dB. Every single track is super loud. Honestly, I have never heard Jesus Spawn and Angelcunt (Tales of Desecration) when both first came out so the discussion will center on how the songs are presented on this release. In this case, I have ripped the discs to .flac and saw the audio spectrogram was through the roof. Surely the sound engineer for this compilation is having a field day to go apeshit with all the dials on the mixing board.

Generally, the songwriting alternates between fast, pummeling grindcore like beats to slow, terrorizing doom in its glorified heaviness that altogether becomes the sound that Archgoat is known for. While the studio mastering does not truly eliminate the artifacts resulted from poorly produced sound, this only adds that sense of juvenility for a band that was in search of its identity, signaling their enthusiasm that can be felt with every note and every bark on the mic. The riffs are obviously based on power chords, sometimes palm muted or played with open strings. To make things hell a lot more interesting, we are presenting with previously unreleased tracks from Hymn to Darkness, positively amplified to the max in terms of sonic assault.

Pretty much you get the idea of what this box set represents. Live cuts are kind of okay and they are none too shabby especially majority of the tracks are spread across three different live shows. I believed the audio is directly taken from the soundboard mix, which explains the clarity and somewhat sterile soundscape. Nevertheless, Angelslayer gives his all whether he sung in praise of the horned master of eternal time, or simply spitting blasphemy onto all things holy including but not limited to quadruple penetration of Mary. Nah, just kidding about the last one but you know what I’m talking about. The drums are standard Archgoat fare with Ritual Butcher’s commanding discordance with every track.

To make things better, we get a glimpse into the band’s formative years and the beliefs held by the Angelslaying brothers plus other entertaining side notes privy to none except those who own this tome of revelation. Yes. The book is lavishly designed with overflowing ornaments of black metal goodness replete with creatively positioned graphics to complement the prophecies written on each page. Now I understand why that guy nailed this boxset for a good $200. The audio discs are both presented in black polycarbonate thus making a pair of super cool collector’s items. Not a lot of bands are rich enough to let the studio pressed their material onto black discs such as these.

All in all, this is a must have for Archgoat diehard fans. By now this compilation is probably LOOP and if you are lucky, there may be some random guys on the internet selling this on eBay or something for exorbitant price. I guess I am so lucky to have this boxset; it’s everything I could ever ask for when it comes to compilation releases. Good choice of tracks given the band’s limited discography, ridiculously mastered sound, beautiful packaging overall that gives this kind of ritualistic feel of owning it, and absolute diabolic artworks to complement the infernal sermons delivered by our favorite Finnish brothers. This is worth owning. Don’t let nobody tell you otherwise.