Conquer Records, 2003
Genre: Death Metal
Rebel Souls:
1. Who Your God Is
2. Son of Fire
3. Rebel Souls
4. Azarath (Watching in Darkness)
5. From the Abyssland
6. Deliverance
7. Might Returns
Coronation:
8. Coronation
9. Spell Master
10. Sworn to the Darkside
Promo '98:
11. Nucleus of Darkness
12. Night of Blasphemy
13. Beyond the Gate
Cover Songs:
14. A Mansion in Darkness (King Diamond cover)
15. Bleed for the Devil (Morbid Angel cover)
I can't remember exactly when, but it seemed by 2003 the Damnation project was winding down. I know Metal-Archives list 2004 as the date of it's split, but I sort of remember the project floundering even before then. I can't remember if this compilation of tracks was an attempt to sort of strike fire into the project or to celebrate it's end. After this the project would really split off into two different bands: Hell-Born and Azarath. Hell-Born would have Baal and Les as the main members and Azarath had Bart and Inferno. Both of these projects would release their debut full-lengths the year after Damnation's "Resist" album came out. Varien wouldn't be involved in either of the projects. This is why I was sort of thinking Damnation was on it's way out and "Resist" wasn't exactly that critically acclaimed.
This brings us to "Resurrection of Azarath" which, as far as compilations go is pretty lame. Rather than pull material from the Damnation catalog of their best songs, this is just a re-release of "Rebel Souls" and "Coronation" and "Coronation" is missing a song entirely. This is also "Rebel Souls" without the intro. Basically, they ran out of time on the disk. What this does have though is the unreleased promo from 1998, which has songs nowhere else and a couple cover tracks. So, in the end, the real reason to pick this up if you're a major Damnation fan is that Promo from '98. It's interesting because at this point Inferno and Nergal were out and Varien had come back. The songs were pretty good, they followed far more in the footsteps of "Coronation" than "Rebel Souls", unfortunately. So they were more of that traditional Death Metal style that we would find on "Resist." The cover songs are okay, obviously their cover of Morbid Angel was good, because Damnation is very influenced by Morbid Angel. The King Diamond cover wasn't that great. The clean vocals weren't very exciting and, well, they didn't even try to re-imagine the song in their style really.
The booklet features the lyrics, even for the Promo and it has some old photos the band took throughout these recording sessions that never made it onto the releases. Other than that it was a bit disappointing because it would have been interesting to have a historical write up from someone like Les thinking back on the years of Damnation, given how influential the project wound up being.
In the end this is only a sub par compilation, only because I already have anything and they couldn't be bothered to really make a "best of" release that covered their entire catalog. It's just a really bizarre way to re-release this music and then to not even include all of "Coronation," but hey, at least I was able to hear "Promo '98" and that's about all I came here for anyway.
Time Before Time Records, 2003
Genre: Death Metal
Everlasting Sickness:
1. Intro
2. Everlasting Sickness
3. Unholy Dissention
4. Reborn Again
5. Merciful Hatred
6. Outro
Forbidden Spaces:
7. Intro (Jesus Wept)
8. Pagan Prayer
9. Time of Prophets
10. Forbidden Spaces
Unreleased Rehearsal:
11. Intro
12. Learning Into New Reality
13. The Land of Degradation
14. The Ruling Truth
15. Outro
"Demonstration of Evil" isn't anything new from Damnation, it's a tape compilation of their demo material from the early 90's. It's go a pro-printed booklet with a dubbed tape limited to 333 hand-numbered copies and I have #146. Even though the booklet is pro-printed there isn't much to it, just a one sided J-card. It's also got a few errors. For example, it lists Varien as having played drums on "Everlasting Sickness", but Wawrzyn played drums on that. It also lists "Learning Into New Reality", which is from the "Reborn" album and called "Leaving Into New Reality". Oh well, the main reason I picked this up is because it was probably the only way I was going to hear the "Everlasting Sickness" demo and I didn't really care about much else.
For these old demos being re-released on tape they weren't all that bad in terms of recording quality. "Everlasting Sickness" is much more typical Florid styled Death Metal, but with "Forbidden Spaces" we start to hear Damnation move more towards that strange chaotic style that would eventually result in the "Rebel Souls" album. Which, for me, is the peak of their recording career. Back in 2003 this tape was worth getting for the demos, but now that "Demo(n)s" was released on CD in 2015, you're better off just getting that. The rehearsal version of "Forbidden Spaces" and extra tracks aren't all that worth it. The rehearsal tracks aren't absolutely horrible sounding, which is a bit surprising for a 1994 recording, they're basically what you'd expect a rehearsal to sound like.
Damnation - Resist
Dark Realm Records, 2000
Genre: Death Metal
1. Your Pain is Not for Me
2. In Resistance
3. Confession
4. Voices of an Unknown Dimension
5. Absence in Humanity
6. Forsaken by Destiny
7. Against My Enemies
8. Invisible Force
9. Down of My Feet
It's been a few years since Damnation had put anything together and I'm sure a lot of that had to do with line-up changes again and possible touring duties for Les related to Behemoth's "Satanica" album. However, it seems that partnership has totally collapsed, because I can't help but notice the absence of a shout out to Nergal and Behemoth... but there is a shout out to Inferno and Azarath, which kind of says volumes. Either way, it seems this was the last gasp of this project as Bart and Les tried to get a team of musicians together for one last album.
First and foremost their original drummer Varien is back in the project. He actually wrote a lot of the lyrics on their original material and on "Resist" he wrote all the lyrics. I will say Varien's drumming has improved immensely over the years and he easily handles all the drum work on "Resist" quite well. Normally I don't bother with commenting on this in a review, but it's almost too funny not to bring up. But Varien has lot to say in his "thanks" section. Baal has almost nothing to say and Les and Bart are short and sweet, but Varien is a full page... and wow, it's a lot. Beyond the usual of thanking musicians, he takes time out of the booklet to thank his favorite movies and video games like Conan, Predator, and Aliens amidst many others. His favorite books and actors etc. At one point he thanks Greenpeace for fighting for the Earth... but then in his "fuck off" section he says a bunch of racist stuff (which was kind of weird/funny after thanking Greenpeace and National Geographic, but I guess that's why Predator 2 didn't get a thank you). Then he moves on to dig at a specific Black Metal band, that he doesn't actually name but puts everything in quotes so we get the "wink wink" hint, he then calls them amateurs, which is promptly spelled incorrectly. You know, I give a lot of leeway to non-English speakers, but come on. If you're going to lay into other people for not being as "elite" or "cool" as you, at least do it flawlessly. I'm not taking time out of this review to make fun of "Down of My Feet" (and no, it's not about hobbits) at any length.
Well, after that interesting journey let's delve into the music. "Resist" maintains that signature Damnation sound, but as I mentioned on the "Coronation" EP the song writing is moving towards a far more organized fashion and we're losing some of that Damnation chaos that was inherent in the founding of the process. And this project being fairly chaotic from an arrangement standpoint makes Varien's dig about "that" Black Metal band all the funnier. "Resist" feels a lot more like a Florida Death Metal release than any of the others. While Les and Bart listed those influences early on, you can just hear the influence more apparently in this. There is even riffing that attempts to get things to sound a bit catchier and the pre-cursor to future Hell-Born releases is certainly present here. For vocal duties, I assume Les recruited Baal, now going by Raven. They would have crossed paths working on Behemoth's "Grom" together and it seems they've decided to work together again after only putting out the first Hell-Born EP a few years before this.
Once again "Resist" has the same trappings of "Coronation" where nothing is particularly memorable. The dense atmosphere of "Rebel Souls" has been stripped out of the project, which really was the bridge to making the material far more interesting to listen to. Despite Varien's elitist posturing, "Resist" wouldn't hold up and eventually Damnation would split entirely. Bart and Inferno would work on Azarath after this and Baal and Les would focus more on Hell-Born. I just hope the split was amicable, because Bart and Les created something really great with Damnation at one point. "Resist" is probably only worth getting if your a completion like me and just want to hear everything from a band you like for good or bad.
Behemoth/Damnation - And the Forest Dream Eternally/Forbidden Spaces
Last Episode, 1997
Genre: Death Metal
Behemoth: And the Forest Dream Eternally
1. Transylvanian Forest
2. Moonspell Rites
3. Sventevith (Storming Near the Baltic)
4. Pure Evil and Wrath
5. Forgotten Empire of Dark Witchcraft
Damnation:
6. Pagan Prayer
7. Forbidden Spaces
8. Time of Prophets
9. The Ruling Truth
Side Behemoth: ...coming eventually...
Side Damnation:
I don't have a lot of interesting stuff to say about this musically, other than delving into the split history. I believe this is the first time these demos have been put to CD. Normally it would be very strange to release these recordings like this because Behemoth is such a Black Metal band and Damnation is such a Death Metal band, but seeing the cross over of musicians sort of makes it obvious why this split happened.
I can understand why Damnation might feel their demo deserves a release like this, but the Behemoth release, which was probably sold out by now, is only two years old. Why not re-release some old Behemoth demo too? The original version of this Behemoth EP came out in '95 and had a black and white cover. Very strange to re-release it in this fashion in my opinion. The major complaint I have about this is that I really wish Damnation's album cover for their side had included a legit album cover version somewhere. Instead it's just on the back of the jewel case with the track listing written over the front of it, unlike Behemoth's cover which gets proper treatment.
At the time it was the only way to get the original "Forbidden Spaces" recording, but since that has changed there is absolutely no need to rush out and buy this split. It doesn't have any new material from either band and unless your some kind of collector that needs every release from the Last Episode record label, it's just not worth hunting down.
Damnation - Coronation
Last Episode, 1997
Genre: Death Metal
1. Coronation
2. Spell Master
3. Sworn to the Darkside
4. The Land of Degradation
Shortly after the great success of "Rebel Souls", Damnation struck back a year later with this short four song EP. There's a bit of a date discrepancy, online it lists this as coming out in early '98, but my CD says 1997. There was probably a delay or something with the pressing, but this was recorded in February 1997 just a year or so after the recording of "Rebel Souls." Some more line-up changes have occurred, Dagon the person behind the bass and keyboards on "Rebel Souls" has departed. So, to fill his role Les turned to Nergal of Behemoth to join him and Bart on this effort. At around this time Behemoth put out the "Bewitching the Pomerania" EP in 1997 which features Les and Inferno as members. So this was Inferno's beginning work with Behemoth. Sadly, Les would not continue on to "Pandemonic Incantation" for some reason, perhaps to avoid touring and maybe in hopes to focus on Damnation. However, Les would later rejoin Behemoth to put out "Satanica" one of the major break out releases for that band.
In any even "Coronation" is a crossing of paths of these great musicians. It's interesting to say that "Coronation" is a rather different album compared to "Rebel Souls." It feels a lot more organized and straight forward. They've sort of dropped some of the interesting haunting clean sections, probably in a hopes to make a more cohesive effort. There's something that just worked for the earlier recordings where there was this wild abandon... like musical composition was just thrown to the side and they just went for it. Here, I think they are trying to bring more songwriting into the mix and the song "Coronation" does have some attempts to have catchier riffs, but they do wind up sounding more like something Vader would compose. I wouldn't say Damnation has lost their edge, merely they've lost a little bit of their style by trying to make things a bit more coherent.
"Coronation" is good, solid Death Metal, but there was a weird ethereal element built into "Rebel Souls" that this lacks. When they started getting organized it feels like they are falling into Death Metal writing traps that many bands have always done, so it winds up having this, I don't want to say generic feel... but it doesn't feel nearly as wild. The songs are pretty good, they're just not stand out songs, nor are they particularly memorable. Not that "Rebel Souls" had memorable riffing, but that album is memorable for an entirely different reason, whereas "Coronation" just isn't memorable at all in the grand scheme of things. It's not a wild ride like "Rebel Souls"... it's fast and it's Death Metal, but if you're going to try to organize in this fashion you really do need to have those catchy riffs that keep a listener coming back.
Damnation - Rebel Souls
Last Epitaph Productions, 1996
Genre: Death Metal
1. Prelude to Rebellion
2. Who Your God Is
3. Son of Fire
4. Rebel Souls
5. Azarath/Watching in Darkness
6. From the Abyssland
7. Deliverance
8. Might Returns
When I refer to the legendary status of Damnation, this is the album I'm specifically referring to. "Rebel Souls" was a real game changer, while compositionally it was quite similar to "Reborn..." it just had that extra refinement that made it work so much more. There's a massive amount of history to unpack on this album, so I'll try to do that as best as I can.
History time. In the short span of time between the debut album and this follow-up Damnation has gone through some line-up changes. Long time drummer Varien, who had been with them since the demo days left the project. At this time, to me, he was one of the weaker links in the project, so I'm not too fussed about his departure. So they found none other than a young drummer who would go on to be one of the most famous drummers in Poland, Inferno. He was only about 18 or so at this time and I believe this is his first major recording. Now, by this point Les had joined a small Black Metal band at the time called Behemoth and he was playing bass for them at the time. He first appeared on the now legendary "Grom." This is likely how Nergal crossed paths with Inferno. Around this time Baal had decided to leave Behemoth as well, so after this Behemoth turned into this sort of Damnation/Behemoth super group and as we know Inferno would stay to be their long time drummer turning it all into quite a career. Les, on the other hand, would continue to play in Behemoth for a few more years eventually playing second guitar on "Satanica" which really put Behemoth on the map. Sadly he would leave Behemoth shortly after.
Now, some people may be asking about this other word showing up here in the track listing... Azarath. That's right, the Azarath concepts date back to Damnation material as well and members would go on to form one of the most intense Polish Death Metal bands Azarath with Inferno on drums and Bart on guitar! Now you can see why an album like "Rebel Souls" holds such massive influence for these scenes and to top it all off it's an awesome album!
With better recording quality available and some serious control in the drum section "Rebel Souls" is an amazing album. It's still weird and Les and Bart tend to compose music that feels abrupt and disjointed at times, but that's part of the weird charm of Damnation. This disjointed style is probably why the project would never really make massive moves in the scene and stay forever underground, because there's almost so much going on it's hard to keep up. There's no catchy rock out sections either, it's all weirdly intense material mashed together with atmospheric guitar passages, but somehow these guys made it work. And with Inferno being a far more accurate drummer, it feels like it's a lot smoother in it's overall execution. When you consider Inferno is all self taught, playing an album like this is quite impressive to jump into, because there are so many changes happening. Les' vocal performance feels a lot stronger on this album as well. "Reborn..." sounded pretty good, but on "Rebel Souls" his vocals feel much stronger. They don't have as many of the haunting spoken word sections, but they do pop up from time to time. I always thought they were an interesting thing to throw into a section of Death Metal like this.
There you have it, the crazy crossover history of "Rebel Souls." A must have, in my opinion, for Death Metal fans. Damnation was always working in a somewhat different way, but this really just shows how good their ideas could come across if executed correctly. I still pull this album out every now and again to listen to it over twenty years later.
Damnation - Reborn...
Pagan Records, 1995
Genre: Death Metal
1. Pagan Prayer/The Antichrist
2. The Land of Degradation
3. Leaving Into New Reality
4. From Broken Cross (Bleeding Jesus)/Time of Prophets
5. Infestation/Maldoror is Dead
6. Forbidden Spaces
7. The Ruling Truth
8. Behind the Wall of Tears
9. Reborn...
Damnation's demo "Forbidden Spaces" is certainly legendary amidst the Polish scene, but all the tracks from that demo can also be found on their debut full-length "Reborn..." Damnation is a band that is absolutely legendary in the Polish scene from what I can see and remember of the time. They stood outside from their compatriots like Vader and Trauma to make something that was truly pretty different. Damnation still had those hard hitting Death Metal riffs of the aforementioned, Bart and Les' guitar work in this project threw in some really different and strange elements into the mix. They could be sort of on par with what Christ Agony was trying to do. Albeit Christ Agony was never going for a blistering and intense Death Metal feel like Damnation was. Damnation kind of skirts around that territory of Black/Death Metal more than being strictly exactly one thing and they're one of the first bands to be blending these things together. In that respect they put a bit of Necrophobic in mind with some of the more haunting and evil sounding aspects of their music, but Necrophobic was never interested in blistering blast beats, which is something Damnation goes after constantly.
As a piece of history "Reborn..." is a really cool album, but it never really transcends that into more timeless legendary status. "Reborn...", unfortunately, feels a bit sloppy in its execution. As if all the musicians behind the ideas were composing songs a little beyond their ability. The drummer just hits things as fast as he possibly can and to me sounds like he's struggling to keep up at times. So the whole effort feels a bit disjointed, but that doesn't take away from what this band was trying to convey with their debut. There are some really excellent ideas on here. I want to compare some of these ideas to Morgoth's "Odium" album, but much faster, just listen to "Infestation/Maldoror is Dead" and I feel like you really hear that classic "Odium" style. However, what Damnation did was blend a lot of that in with more of an extreme vibe, drawing inspiration from things like Morbid Angel or Mayhem. In the booklet they have a "dedication" list of the musicians they are inspired by, however, I would say Les and Bart's interpretation of these sounds wound up being quite unique. It is amusing to read that they emphasize "old Morbid Angel" in this and other bands, because I assume "Covenant" was a bit of a sell-out album for these guys at the time. That's okay, you can certainly hear the "Blessed are the Sick" and "Altars of Madness" inspiration, especially in some of their solo ideas.
"Reborn..." has some great ideas on it, but with more suspect execution than you'd probably want. If these guys had been able to have a far more professional recording and performance I think things would have gone quite differently for this band. Either way, when it comes to the underground of their time anyone that grew up in that era knows about this band. If you're a major fan of the Polish classics, this is a must have discography.
