BESTIAL SUMMONING - Official Live Tape 1992 digi-CD

A piece of Dutch Black Metal history,

Holland's Bestial Summoning were one of the earliest bands to throw in their hat with the then pretty obscure black metal sound, becoming infamous because of their raw, semi-improvised music. Because of that knowledge, I totally expected this EP to sound as if it were recorded on a packet of biscuits, but to my utter surprise, this sounds really good. Well, really acceptable is perhaps better said, I don't think the words 'really' and 'good' have ever been used in relation to Bestial Summoning.

In sound, Bestial Summoning were related to old Beherit, their side project Goat Vulva, and the earliest works of Profanatica and Impaled Nazarene. It's raw and unhinged in its sound, utilizing tremelo picked washes of guitar grit, supported by either slowly pounding sections crawling forth, or else primitive uptempo hammering. On top of this come the distorted screams of a vocalist who does his alias of The Unsane every honor, because this guy sounds utterly demented. It probably goes without saying that the overall execution isn't exactly tight, but I can't imagine the band actually caring about that a whole lot.