Blasphemy Fallen Angel of Doom?.

Blasphemy 'Fallen Angel of Doom....' (Wild Rags, 1990)

This is the first, but certainly not the last, album I bought purely for the cover. I thought it was hilarious. The back cover with topless 'built' skinheads hanging about a graveyard with a puny longhair raising a solidarity fist beside a gravestone was just excellent. It was the names of the band that really got me, how could I refuse a records that featured 'Nocturnal Grave Desecrator and Black Winds' (effects, bass, lead vocals), Traditional Sodomizer of the Goddess of Perversity (effects, rhythm guitar, backing vocals), Caller of the Storms (effects, lead guitars) and Black Hearts of Damnation and Impurity (drums). OK, some might say 'Easily', but I just couldn't resist. This was comedy gold.

I would put 'Fallen Angel of Doom...' on whenever people would come to visit me in Glasgow and we would laugh at the sheer over the topness of the release. Secretly, however, I was growing to love it. I won't beat about the bush; everything about this band is amazing. The artwork, the merchandise, the bandolier wearing, the 'Satanic Skinhead' image and then there's the music.

Sarcofago may have been the originators of the barbaric sound Blasphemy unleash, but Sodom, Sepultura, Bathory, Venom and even Napalm Death ooze through every groove. The most intense part of the performance is the vocals. They sound as if they are being vomited forth from the very depths of hell. Backwards. The vocals and cymbals are so high in the mix that the cavernous reverb and constantly echoing death grunts utterly overwhelm the incessantly blasting music. It's so alien that it works brilliantly.

Split into sides 'Darkness' and 'Impurity' the album unleashes auditory hell with classics like 'Desecration', 'Ritual' and 'Weltering in Blood' defiling your eardrums. It's an unrelenting rollercoaster of a ride and it still brings a smile to my lips two decades after I purchased it in Missing's Brown Street store, which had one of the best 'second wave' of Black Metal sections I have ever seen.

The thing that made this band even more special to me was when our Vancouver based friend Rob confirmed, upon being asked if he knew of Blasphemy, that 'Yeah, they're those steroid weightlifting dudes that have Satanic Rituals is Ross Bay Cemetery'. I know it's sad but that just made them so much cooler in my eyes; they were actually known in their home town for being the real deal and they were bizarre power lifting freaks!

Unfortunately, I think there is a lot of dodgy politics that surround Blasphemy and their ever-growing league of copycats/acolytes, but I have always comforted myself with the fact that 'Caller of the Storms' is black and I'd imagine that if any of the spotty racist manboys who worship at the altar of Burzum were to say anything untoward in the presence of the vastness that is Blasphemy they would be rightly torn apart by steroid crazed Ross Bay Goat Worshippers.

The originators and the true Ross Bay Cult. Worship or die!

Peace