Pervogoat

This compilation contains all the material ever recorded by the band: "Face of Death" demo 1996, "Demo 2" 1997, and three rehearsal tracks recorded in 2000-2001 and never before released.

The vocals on the first demo are strongly inspired by early Burzum, yes, it's almost Varg's voice. While it is not heard that the Pervogoat music is "Burzumish" too. Most likely it is the Finnish school of black metal at its finest. But the vocals capture the attention and makes listener think that it is "yet another Burzum clone". Wrong. Perhaps there is really little originality here, but for those times it was quite authentic work. Track of the same name is the best one on this part of the compilation. I would also like to note a solo in the "Chalice to Hell" track — primitive, but very heartfelt. The recording quality is terrible, but there's only one thing that I don't really like here: the intro is tooooo long for the movie quote.

The vocals on the second demo are more individual, so you can forget about Burzum finally. On the whole this material is more original than the earlier work. There is some progress here: the songs have become a bit more complex in structure. And the music seems more depressing. All three songs begin with the same short intro in the vein of early Mortiis. More surprising is that "Seven Day and Seven Night" has a riff from "Ohne Dich" by Rammstein (from 02:40 to 05:10). Played in the black metal way of course. But needless to say about the influence of Rammstein: this demo was recorded in 1997, while the Rammstein single was released in 2004. Anyway the best track from the second demo is next one — "Ikuisesti". The keyboards part makes this composition very affective.

Well, as for the provocative slogan "Sieg Heil Finland" on the cover of the tape (by the way on the J-card of the first tape — both images are presented in a booklet — we can read a classic slogan "True Aryan Black Metal"), I'd rather quote the Breath of Pestilence owner's letter to me: "The second demo is actually just called "Demo 2", that "Sieg Heil Finland" text is quite misleading as there was nothing NS about the demo, it was purely Satanic." Well, at least the song titles are definitely not NS. It seems Black Spell has made a strange career: he was a skinhead at the time but as time goes he died of an overdose. That's what they call the black metal fate I think. Ouch, old school black metal fate.

The rehearsal recording is good in its own way, but there are some punk elements here which I really don't like. But punk has wheedled its way into the Pervogoat musical message before that time, come to think of it. Well, as we all know, this is an element of no small importance in Finnish black metal. The songs are mostly midtempo here, like on the entire compilation. Sometimes there are attacks too, but for a little while... If you ask me it's good that the band ended up on this work.

For last the intriguing information. The name Pervogoat is similar in meaning with the name of the far more famous band from Finland called Archgoat. "Archgoat" is an affix with (ancient) Greek origin "arch-" + "goat", literally it means "chief goat" or "goat of origin", while "Pervogoat" is a Slavic (Russian too) root "pervo-" + "goat", it means "the first of goats" or "goat of origin". That's how it goes.