Thirst - ...Darkness...

THIRST - ...Darkness... (DARK OMENS Production CD 2017)

After Abusiveness and Dagor, it's time for another old black metal recording, which has been re-released on CD. This one is from Thirst, which is one of the oldest running Polish black metal bands, formed back in 1991. They have some great recordings in discography, like "Per Aspera ad Astra" (2004) and "Blacklight" (2008) albums, and more stuff, which I can honestly recommend. With this CD, released by Dark Omens Production, we go back in time to 1993 and Thirst's very first demo "...Darkness...", so we get another collectible item with old black metal artefact. 

It's actually the first time I hear this demo. I used to have Thirst's "The Might of the Pagan Belief" tape from 1994, but I never had "...Darkness...". Obviously, you shouldn't expect fancy and "professional sounding" black metal from it. Just like most of the black metal from those days, "...Darkness..." also sounds just as nasty and obscure as possible, especially as it's rehearsal recording. And obviously the music is raw, primitive and archaic, with similarities to bands like early Samael, or Polish demos like "Return of the Northern Moon". It's nothing impressive, to be honest, nor the best demo I have ever heard, I would say that it's rather mediocre even for the old days. But it does bring back that atmosphere or evil and darkness, which characterized the old black metal and which so often is gone on the nowadays recordings. And it does show how this genre used to sound like, how malicious and obscure the sound and music used to be. Primitive or not, I like some of these riffs a lot, even the recording quality is not bad at all. And I mentioned that unholy atmosphere of the music, which is also great. So, to my surprise I enjoyed listening to "...Darkness...".  

This CD contains also a couple of live recordings from 1992, but they're rather useless and I personally would prefer if this CD only had the original demo recordings without bonus tracks. The booklet quality is super good, so in case you like to exhume such old recordings, I sincerely advise you to check "...Darkness..." and Thirst in general. 

Final rate: 65/100