Description

Reduced price due to some small hairline marks Mega rare original 1997 cd release on Pagan records with 2 bonus tracks Imperator was a furious Polish death black metal act that started back in Lodz in 1984. They released four great demos between 1984 and 1988. Their music caught the ears of Euronymous who really liked the music and lyrics. Imperator was supposed to release their debut album on Euronymous record label Deathlike Silence and vocalist and guitarist Piotr Bariel Tomczyk also had plans to record an album together with Euronymous and Dead in a sideproject baptized Moon. However everything was was shelved after Dead's suicide and Euronymous murder. Instead the band released their debut album ‘The Time Before Time’ on a small Polish label called Nameless Production. Nameless productions however had almost no distribution and the album sold poorly. This recording practically bankrupted the band. The last recording session of the Bariel line-up was in 1995, when they tried to record a second album. Nothing came out of it and Bariel later immigrated to Australia. He has since returned to Poland and now works as an English teacher. ‘The Time Before Time’ album is still relative unknown and it would probably have been hailed both cult release and death metal masterpiece if it had been released on Deathlike Silence. Anyone who has heard ‘The Time Before Time’ knows that it’s a perfect document of the time before Vader emerged as everyone’s favourite band from behind the Iron Curtain. It was originally a self-financed album and Imperator were one of the first bands to prove it was actually possible to put out a quality release without selling out to Metal Mind Productions, which to every seasoned Polish metalhead was what Babylon is to Rastafarians. The album has it all with its artwork with the wicked black cover with the silver ornaments, the pentacle and the lyrics about all things dark and primordial. If you’ve never heard Imperator, imagine a cross between early Sarcofago and really early, ‘Abominations of Desolation’-era, Morbid Angel, there are some blastbeats and stop-start riffing but the guitar sound is unmistakably thrash metal and the vocals wouldn’t be out of place on early Sepultura releases. Track listing: 1. Eternal Might 2. Abhorrence 3. Necronomicon 4. Persecutor 5. Defunct Dimensions 6. External Extinction 7. Ancient Race 8. Love Is the Law (Love Under Will) 9. The Rest Is Silence