Misanthropy Records "Presumed Guilty" Compilation CD (1998)

Before streaming algorithms decided what your subculture should sound like, labels like Misanthropy Records were doing the actual work, pulling together artists who had no business sharing a tracklist and somehow making it feel inevitable.

Released in 1998, Presumed Guilty is a snapshot of a moment when the lines between black metal, dark ambient, neofolk, and gothic doom were genuinely porous, and the people making this music were more interested in dragging each other into new territory than staying in their lanes. Burzum and Mayhem represent the Norwegian black metal contingent, but the real pleasure here is how they sit alongside Amber Asylum's chamber-doom, Hagalaz' Runedance's Nordic folk, Primordial's early Irish darkness, and the industrial gothic of Babylon Whores. In the Woods. and Beyond Dawn bring the progressive weirdness. Dream Into Dust, Endura, and Monumentum round out something that reads less like a sampler and more like a scene document. Misanthropy was one of the few labels at the time with the taste and the nerve to sign acts this far outside any single genre box, and this comp is the proof.

Original 1998 pressing. CD format. Includes tracks from: Dream Into Dust, In the Woods., Solstice, Hagalaz' Runedance, Primordial, Burzum, Amber Asylum, Babylon Whores, Mayhem, Beyond Dawn, Endura, Aphrodisiac, and Monumentum.

Fans of: Cold Meat Industry releases, Misanthropy Records back catalogue, early Peaceville comps, anyone who had A Blaze in the Northern Sky and Dies Irae on the same shelf.