Northern Storm Division/Eastside, 2011
Genre: Black Metal
1. The Return of Wintry Gales
2. The Pagan's Fullmoon
3. In the Shadow of the Shadows
4. His Blood Runs in My Veins
The reason I'm posting this as Mastiphal 2, is because it is literally the second band named Mastiphal from Poland. The first was formed in 1991 and they are from Katowice, Poland. This Mastiphal formed around 1993 and is from Gdansk, Poland. The first Mastiphal is more well known, but also had serious periods of inactivity after releasing their first album. As far as this Mastiphal is concerned "Nocturnal Landscape," originally released in 1994 would be their first and only musical output. This is the re-release and it is limited to 150 hand-numbered copies, of which I own #50. At least... I think it's a 50, the hand writing is rather poor and the box is very tiny so it might be an 80...
Inside the booklet it says "Recorded on bad equipment at the fullmoon night of 09.03.1994" and they are not kidding. The recording quality of this tape makes it nearly unlistenable. I don't think I can even review this with any level of objectivity... The guitar is almost completely inaudible making it very hard to judge the merit of the atmosphere they're trying to evoke. What I can get through the poor recording seems to be fairly typical early 90's Black Metal atmosphere. This probably wasn't bad, but I find it entirely inaccessible given the way it's presented. Since this band is from Gdansk, it says that Nergal plays session drums and I wonder if it's the same Nergal of Behemoth fame.
Ultimately I am left with having virtually no opinion on this project. All I can say is that I completely dislike the recording quality. I have almost no idea what went on during this demo and if they ever decided to re-record it, I would listen, but that seems unlikely as this was nearly twenty years ago.
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