In het holst van de zwarte nacht

In my journeys through the Christian black metal underground, I've come across some pretty raw material - the tape recorder lowered into hell sound of Emperador, the blitzkrieg necroblasting that is Armageddon Holocaust, and the black n' roll freakouts of Bealiah, to name a few. But none come close to this band in terms of pure animalistic savagery. If their Christian beliefs haven't already scared off any potential fans, then their sound will scare off the remaining one percent, leaving me and maybe one or two other guys nodding our heads in approval.

But to the music. If you sat through the entire barbed-wire flogging of Ulver's "Nattens Madrigal" like I did, then you'll love this demo (with all its strange Braveheart sampling intact). Not that it's necessarily similar, but the overall effect of being beaten to a hamburger-esque pulp by spiked flails is definitely there as it was on Ulver's masterpiece. "Satanic Lamentation" boasts some heavy riffing all filtered through maximum treble, and laced with some of the most intense and frightening black metal vocals you'll ever hear. Many of the tracks are peppered with feedback as well, giving the songs a real one-off quality to them - it's like the band came in, destroyed (as their name implies), and disappeared.

For me, this is a gem of a demo - if you're a raw black metal fan, and songs like the title track don't send shivers up and down your spine, then something's wrong. This is pure black vomit, delivered with all the energy of a wolf tearing its prey's throat out.

Even though the original of this demo is still available through Nokternal Hemizphear as I write this, I recommend purchasing the re-release of this demo and the subsequent single instead. Better artwork, and contains all of the band's material on one disc (which isn't much).