Download: Intrusion of Dark Journey [1993] 3 comments

I am currently listening to Infectious Maggots – Unknown. Infectious Maggots is a local band that has been around for quite sometime, with three full lengths under their belt, playing industrial grindcore to the fullest. Fuck yeah. “Unknown”, their second album, was released in 1996 by Pony Canyon music.

In my previous post, I have determined that I will be putting some downloadable materials up in the bullet belt and this shall be the first entry under that newly created download tag. I think the best approach to initiate the preamble to the Malaysian Metal music is by letting the listeners indulge into the earliest form of Malaysian Metal compositions and the “Intrusion of Dark Journey” compilation is the best way to kick starts the engine.

“Intrusion of Dark Journey” was one of the earliest extreme metal compilations ever to be recorded and I suggest that every metal heads in Malaysia should consider getting this compilation tape as an essential document to the history of Malaysian extreme metal. But please be informed that you do need to excavate unfathomable archeological sites to find this one since it is extremely difficult to find the tape nowadays.

For the Malaysian headbangers, go and look for the last available copies in Campbell Complex, Kuala Lumpur. I found my copy there and that was like 10 years ago. If you are interested to get yourself in the know of the evolution of Malaysian Metal from the earliest of form then this recording, in my honest opinion, would be a good place to start.

This compilation was produced by the historical Dark Journey Records, to my best of limited knowledge, one of the earliest independent record labels ever to emerge from Malaysia championing extreme metal, in 1993. There are 8 Death metal and Black Metal bands featured in this recording. The bands were Demisor, Profane Creation, Incubated Worms, Nebiras, Bazzah, Aradia, Misanthrope and Kitanai-Chi.

Correct me if I am in the wrong about these facts but if I am not mistaken Demisor was and very much still is a Singaporean godz of grind and as far as I know Profane Creation, Incubated Worms and Kitanai-Chi have all been dissolved. Profane Creation contributed 2 songs for another local compilation called "Ipoh Metal Militant Supremacist" in 1998. Kitanai Chi went on to release a four song EP in 1995 titled "The Mystery of the Dark War Come true" under the moniker Mystery.

I do not know the status of Nebiras since their last offering, “The Great Rites” in 1998 but you can still reach the band through their Myspace page, Misanthrope changed their moniker to Ravenlord and released an album titled “Martyr, Hail” in 2000, the legendary Bazzah is still active and their latest offering was in 2006 titled “Possessed by Evil” and Aradia had just been recently reformed and finally with a full length album under their bulletbelts titled “Draconis Eulogy”.

Bazzah: Myspace | EncMetallum
Aradia: Myspace | EncMetallum
Nebiras: Myspace | EncMetallum
Profane Creation: EncMetallum
Ravenlord: EncMetallum
Mystery: EncMetallum

Name: Intrusion of Dark Journey Compilation
Label: Dark Journey Records
Size: 39.6mb
Year: 1993
Bands: Demisor, Profance Creation, Incubated Worms, Aradia, Bazzah, Misanthrope, Nebiras & Kitanai-Chi.

DOWNLOAD

Bands - Akhnakh 1 comments

AKHNAKH

Akhnakh is a five piece melodic death metal band from Ipoh Perak. Citing Amorphis, Sentenced, Dissection and Shadows Fall as their influences, the listeners might have some idea of what to expect from Akhnakh. The band was formed in 2004, and being a band from the mighty Ipoh, I do believe that these guys have a reputation to live up to since Ipoh had been known since the early days as the breeding ground for local extreme metal heavyweights in the likes of the mighty Brain Dead, Vociferation Eternity, Langsuyr, Necrotic Chaos, and Hayagriva just to name a few.

I have always been rather fond of Ipoh. I would usually go there four or five times in a year and would always find it funny and amusing that Ipoh townsmen would normally have myriad kinds of fried rice for breakfast, the kinds of which the KLites would usually have for dinner. They got a thing going on down there in Ipoh with their Ipoh Metal Militia thingy and all of the above mentioned bands were either originators or instigators commanding godly respect in the league of their own.

Judging from the three songs available in their Myspace page, musically, Akhnakh seems quite promising if you are looking for your typical one-lead-guitar-riffing-through-a-structure-of-chords melodic death metal with a few chunk of heavy metal here and there. My only complaint was the vocal and the guitar solo department.

I was never really a fan of those choking core growls that were neither brutal nor horrifying. It was too monotonous. Unfortunately the vocalist seems to be having a hard time catching up with the tempo of the songs, something that I could not really tolerate because it would just spoils the whole song, not to mention my mood. The guitar solo was done half heartedly, that I can tell.

It is quite normal for the local bands to produce their songs themselves rather than having an actual producer with them in the studio, which is for me is quite an unhealthy prcatice since band members have the tendency to get themselves immunized of the mistakes or glitches that would sometime (most of the time) result in fatal.

Having a producer in the studio can actually help you a lot in terms of identifying mistakes in the production and giving a breath of fresh air in to the creativity department. Financing a producer, however, was always the main problem with most of these bands, not to mention that there are only a few producers nowadays who produce metal anyway.

I honestly do hope that these guys can produce better songs in the future since they have already got a few releases under their belt since the inception of the band anyway. Akhnakh is Ajak – vocals, Amzar – Guitar, Abe – Bass, Nan – Drums and Soll – Guitars.

AKHNAKH on MySpace

Rants - Malaysian Metal Downloads: no comments

I am currently in the office and I am too lazy to read my files or to attach myself to anything related to work. I had been contemplating to put up a download section in The Bullet Belt, weighing the pros and cons of having the section in this blog, for a more than a couple of weeks now.

When I first started this blog, it was solely out of the idea to promote the obscure Malaysian extreme metal scene and its music. Come to think of it, the best way to promote the music is by letting the music speaks for itself. I can write and promote the bands as hard and creative as I wanted, but at the end of the day, the only thing that would remain relevant will always be the music.

Sure, I can write about how good and cult Malaysian local bands, in the likes of Sil Khannaz or Silent Death or Nebiras or Negation, are, but with out the pleasure and opportunity to listen to their respective brand of good and cult heavy metal, all the promotions that I have been doing all these while, at the end of the day would only land on deaf ears and blind eyes.

Thus, I believe among the best way to promote Malaysian metal music would be by giving the readers (non Malaysian especially) the opportunity to experience Malaysian metal music for themselves.

No, I am not going to turn this blog into a music download blog. I will only feature the albums which to my personal opinion should have been regarded as local landmark albums or those local metal albums that I think should be shared to the rest of the world.

Looking at it from the brighter side, having a download section would also attract more international visitors especially those metalheads out there who often scour and scavenge the cyberspace for downloadables (I should know because I am one of those so called cyberspace scavengers haha). Hopefully they would remain to be unique frequents of this small unattractive blog.