“What a strange, strange beast this album is. It sounds extraordinary: it’s like Morbid Angel playing jazz in your living room! At the same time, everything is as clear as crystal, but you’re floored with surprising twists and turns. It’s demanding yet deceptively intimate. From acoustic passages to heavy death metal riffhem (and sometimes these two are intertwined), from Martin Walkyier on overdrive verbose-ism to harsh Grishnackhisms, it’s a genuine underground treasure from a time when intriguing spirits still lurked in the shadows.” – Mikko Mattila, Isten Fanzine
A hidden gem from the ’90s underground, Dark Heresy‘s Abstract Principles Taken To Their Logical Extremes was an album way ahead of its time. And now it’s been carefully restored, remastered, and immortalized for vinyl and digital by Jaime Gomez Arellano (Ghost, Paradise Lost, Cathedral) and released by Svart Records in collaboration with Secret Trees, the label imprint run by Mat McNerney (Grave Pleasures/Hexvessel). Wildly heavy yet eclectic blackened death metal with intricate and extraordinary lyrics, acoustic passages and beautifully soaring vocals, all recorded live on analogue tape.
Dark Heresy from England were opening for Dissection and headlining the Marquee, having released a handful of classic demo tapes and played tons of local London shows in the golden era of death metal, well known for their tight and stunning live sets. They released this, their one and only album on a Greek label, and then disappeared off the map, with no reissues and only some badly transferred Youtube clips of their CD release floating around the internet, for death metal archivists and fanatics to marvel over. For those in the know, this album has been an obscure treasure and has now been unearthed and preserved on heavy wax in the way it had always meant to be presented. The album comes with band interviews, liner notes and lyrics, furnished in a lush booklet along with a collection of old gig flyers and never-before-seen photographs of the band. Order info can be found HERE. Cover and tracklisting are as follows:
Tracklisting for Dark Heresy’s Abstract Principles
Taken To Their Logical Extremes
1. Engines of Torture
2. The Last Temptation of Pan
3. The Ceremony
4. Thy Blood
5. Ofermod
6. Hole
7. The Millstone
8. Tyler’s Stand