Nunslaughter – Very Early And Filthiest Demos [Compilation]

Artist: Nunslaughter
Country: USA
Label: Discos MeCagoEnDios
Formats: LP
Year: 2024

Within the ranks of Death Metal the early Nunslaughter demos are regarded as real cult items, maybe not as revolutionary or as influential as some of the other demos circulating at the time. But other than bands like Possessed, Massacre or Death it is Nunslaughter that basically never changed a single bit since these early days. This stubborn persistency has gained the band a place in many Extreme Metal fan’s hearts.

When Death Metal started to develop and gain massive popularity by the end of the 80’s a lot of people looked back upon these old Nunslaughter demos as being really primitive and not on par with the genre’s then blossoming creativity. Nunslaughter themselves seemed to care less and continued their own musical path, a straight one without any turns or roundabouts.

It was around the early 00’s and the years that followed that Nunslaughter started to gain popularity and overall recognition – not in the least because of the then newly found Hells Headbangers Records took the band on their roster. These were also the years that many collectors started their collections of all these great (looking) 7” EP’s. And of course, with that growing interest in the band, those old demo recordings received renewed attention as well. The result was that Hells Headbangers Records started to reissue these recordings on several formats: separate 7” EP’s and a bigger collection of all these demos put together.

Despite all those earliest recordings already having seen a reissue somewhere along the road, this Spanish label (run by Iñaki of the great but defunct Dishammer and Looking For An Answer) thought it would be a great idea to put Nunslaughters first two demos on a 12” LP again. So, that means we are served with ‘Ritual Of Darkness’ (1987) and ‘Rotting Christ’ (1989) – as usual, both in their original form: raw and harsh.

Having heard these tracks hundreds of times, it is still great to hear these very first recordings. At that time the band wasn’t fronted by Don of the Dead yet (he was the band’s bassist at the time), but had Greg Biehl on vocals (now mostly known for running the No Gleaming Light YouTube channel). Consequently Nunslaughter sounded slightly different, but that is only limited to the vocal department. On the timbre of the vocals, to be exact as even the trademark cackling laugh was already part of the band’s repertoire. Musically, the demos offer many of the band’s classic tracks that are still part of its setlist like ‘Killed By The Cross’, ‘I Am Death’ and ‘Hell’s Unholy Fire’.

Needless to say that the demos are much rawer than the later versions that appeared on the band’s debut album or EP’s. Especially ‘Rotting Christ’, here presented on the B-side, is extremely raw, some people would claim this is even plain unlistenable – and it’s hard not to agree with them. While listening to ‘Rotting Christ’ it is not hard to imagine how people in 1989 thought Nunslaughter was a joke, in the end, that was also the year that we were presented with ‘Altars Of Madness’ (Morbid Angel), ‘Realm Of Chaos’ (Bolt Thrower), ‘Severed Survival’ (Autopsy), ‘Consuming Impulse’ (Pestilence), ‘Piece Of Time’ (Atheist), ‘World Downfall’ (Terrorizer), ‘Symphonies Of Sickness’ (Carcass), ‘Horrified’ (Repulsion) and ‘Resurrection Absurd’ (Morgoth) to only name just a few.

With all that in mind, the real value of this EP is a bit hard to determine. On the one hand, the positive one, you can claim that such important demos should never be out of print – newer generations of Death Metal fans should always be able to get their hands on a piece of the band’s (and genre’s) history. In the end it is hard to deny that these earliest steps were of vital importance in the development of one underground’s most celebrated bands. On the other hand, I think it wouldn’t be too hard to get these demo recordings on other releases. ‘Ritual Of Darkness’ was even reissued five times as a stand-alone release (so not counting the occasion where it was part of a compilation release), the earliest one being a Brazilian bootleg 7” EP from 1993.

Ah, well. If this release is showing and proving anything it is that Nunslaughter’s Devil Metal is timeless. That alone is worth to spend another piece of vinyl on.