BATHORY Bathory Vinyl

Before black metal had a name, Quorthon was already building its blueprint in a Stockholm rehearsal room with a drum machine and a budget of essentially nothing.

The 1984 self-titled debut is where it all starts, and anyone who tries to argue otherwise is selling you something. Raw, primitive, genuinely evil-sounding in a way that a lot of what came after never quite recaptured. No theatrics, no orchestration, just a sixteen-year-old Swede deciding that metal needed to get much, much darker. This record is the reason DARKTHRONE, IMMORTAL, GORGOROTH, and half the Norwegian second wave exist. Owning it on vinyl is the correct format for a record that sounds like it was pressed in a cave.

Swedish black metal, 1984. Side A: Darkness Storm of Damnation, Hades, Reaper, Necromansy, Sacrifice. Fans of: Venom, Mercyful Fate, early Celtic Frost.