One of my favourite releases from the "raw black metal" sub-genre. Harsh, uncomprimising black filth from Denmark. All of their releases are quality but this album really stands out for me.
Continuing on the theme - one of the greatest metal albums of all time. Bow down and worship.
As promised, here is the one and only Brats LP which is further removed from the Mercyful Fate metal sound and is more NWOBHM/hard rock mixed with some punk. This was before King Diamond joined the band.
Brats were a Danish punk/metal band that later became one of the greatest metal bands ever in Mercyful Fate. If you don't know who Mercyful Fate are, they basically created the black metal image and hence I often refer to them as a proto-black metal band along with stuff like Sarcofago and early Sodom, even though the music is basically thrash metal. You can recognize almost all of the songs on this as Mercyful Fate songs, albeit with some differing lyrics (it can be weird at first hearing the tune of Curse of the Pharaohs to completely different lyrics). King Diamond's unique vocals are also instantly recognizable. Compared with their 1980 LP (which I will post too), this is much more metal and might as well be a MF record. Indeed, most of these songs can also be found on Mercyful Fate reissues as bonus tracks.
Two killer bands on one split 7". Both Hooded Menace and Coffins play dark and heavy death/doom metal.
One of the greatest bands of all time. "A Guide for Beginners: The Silver Voice" is a reissue of a Russian 2-CD compilation which contained this as well as "A Guide for Finishers - A Hair of Gold". The Russian word for "finisher" means both suicide and cumming. This CD contains some of my favourite Coil tracks, including "Ostia (The Death of Pasolini)" and "Batwings (A Liminal Hymn)", which was played at John Balance's funeral service. Coil is music as abstract art.
Lately I've been finding and listening to some Russian music. Театр Яда are one of my most interesting discoveries so far. This album is experimental, strongly leaning towards industrial and darkwave. Its also quite weird and mysterious, probably even moreso because of the band's origin and the fact that I can't find anything at all written about them that isn't in Russian.
