BLASPHEMY · Blood Upon The Altar | BLACK LP

Black vinyl in a full-color gatefold sleeve. Includes a poster.

Background information about 'Blood Upon The Altar'

Some records don't just arrive — they break down the door. "Blood Upon the Altar" is the 1989 demo that Blasphemy cut on a shoestring budget at Fiasco Bros. studio, and three and a half decades later it still sounds like a war drum echoing out of a basement in Vancouver. This is where the template for bestial black metal got carved into stone: raw, ugly, relentless, and utterly convinced of its own mission. No polish, no compromise, just riffs that charge forward like a battering ram while the vocals claw their way out of the mix.

What makes this thing so special is the DNA running through it. You can hear Bathory and Sodom in the bones, the frantic punk energy of the Brazilian scene in the bloodstream, and the grinding violence of early grindcore in the muscle. Blasphemy took all of that and pushed it somewhere nastier, more confrontational, more physical. The result is a demo that set a new bar for extremity — and the band kept raising it with every release that followed.

And here's the part that matters: for the first time since its original release, "Blood Upon the Altar" stands on its own as a proper album instead of being tacked onto the end of "Gods of War" as bonus material. The long, awkward gaps between tracks that plagued earlier reissues have been fixed, James Plotkin handled a fresh remaster, and the original demo artwork is back on the cover, wrapped in a full-color gatefold. A joint release by NWN! and Ross Bay Cult, this is the version the demo always deserved. Essential, plain and simple.

For fans of: Bathory, Sodom, Sarcofago, Repulsion, Beherit

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