Year: 2024
Label: Darkness Shall Rise Productions
Rating: classic
Disappointed in HELLBUTCHER, I decided not to go far and immediately turn to the latest compilation of NIFELHEIM named “Unholy Death”, published by Darkness Shall Rise a couple of weeks ago. The collection contains a demo from 1993, but this is not a simple reissue. Of those sessions, only 4 tracks with a total length of 14 minutes were included on the original cassette. Now, for the first time in history, we can get acquainted with all the material: these are 4 already familiar tracks, 4 previously unreleased, as well as covers of MOTÖRHEAD and BATHORY. 37 minutes in total.
"Unholy Death" almost completely repeats the composition of the debut album (1994), but in the demo version the songs sound darker and angrier. It's a rough mix of diabolical BATHORY classics with early Scandinavian Black Metal techniques. You probably know that NIFELHEIM's music has always existed somewhere between 1985 and 1992, but on ”Unholy Death" it occasionally gets within touching distance to, for example, ENSLAVED or EMPEROR demos. There are cold tremolo riffs and even some musical landscapes, uncharacteristic of the later work of the Swedish brothers. This is all due to some very basic production: you can hear that “Unholy Death” is quite clumsy, noisy, but it's a demo, not just a garage rehearsal recording.
The quality of the performance, I must say, does not differ much from the album version. Of course, there are no arrangements here, and the sound eats up all the high and low frequencies, but the guys play pretty smoothly. Their skills can be assessed by the covers: both tracks played almost without mistakes. By the way, I almost forgot about the most important fact. This is the demo where Nifelheim's first guitarist, Morbid Slaughter, plays, who was kicked out of the band after recording the demo for having a girlfriend!
English (UK) 
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