BATHORY

The debut full-length studio album by legendary Swedish Black/Thrash Metal band.
One of the contenders for the first Black Metal record!
Bathory was formed in 1983. The band's frontman, Quorthon, worked part-time at the small record label Tyfon. In late 1983 and early 1984, the label was putting together a compilation of songs by Scandinavian Metal bands. However, at the last minute, one of the bands backed out. Tyfon agreed to let Bathory appear on the record as a replacement, and the band recorded two songs for the compilation ("Sacrifice" and "The Return of the Darkness and Evil") in January. The album, "Scandinavian Metal Attack", was released in March 1984 and was Bathory's first appearance on record. To everyone's surprise, over 95 percent of fan mail, sent to the label after the record's release, was dedicated to Bathory. Tyfon asked the band to record a full-length album...
His bandmates having moved away, Quorthon recruited Rickard Bergman as bassist and Stefan Larsson as drummer. On 22 May 1984, they had their first and only rehearsal together before recording the album. On 14 June the band entered Heavenshore Studio in Stockholm (a converted garage) to record the debut. The studio had a homemade eight-channel tape recorder. Due to the band's tight budget, they ran the recorder at half-speed to fit everything on one master tape. They also had to work quickly – the recording and mixing were done in somewhere between 32 and 56 hours.
The album was originally to be named "Pentagrammaton" and to have a pentagram on the cover, but this name was scrapped when several people misread it as Pentagon. The pentagram was moved to the back and replaced with a retouched portion of a drawing made by Joseph A. Smith in 1981, for the book "Witches" by Erica Jong. For the writing on the back cover, Quorthon bought a set of rub-on letters in the Old English font; however, he was one letter short ('C'), and as a result, the second 'C' in "Necromancy" was replaced with an 'S'. The introduction, "Storm of Damnation", and the outro was also mistakenly left off the track listing.
The goat on the album cover, taken from a drawing by Joseph Smith, was originally meant to be printed in gold. However, this was too expensive to use, so Quorthon asked for it to be as near to gold as possible; the result was more of a yellowish color. According to "Swedish Death Metal" book, Quorthon thought it looked "awful", and after the first 1000 pressings it was switched to black-and-white. The yellow cover has become a collector's item, and is now well known as "Gula Geten" ("The Yellow Goat").
Daniel Ekeroth, author of the book "Swedish Death Metal", described the album's style as "basically a mix of the Satanic Party Rock of Venom and the energy of San Francisco Thrash Metal". While Bathory leader, Quorthon, claimed to have not heard Venom before making the album and to be inspired by Black Sabbath, Motörhead and GBH, former drummer Jonas Åkerlund claimed that Bathory was "exclusively" inspired by Venom during these days.
"Bathory" was released in October 1984 and sold out its subsequent pressing of 1000 in two weeks. The album has since gained a cult notoriety. It was reissued remastered on CD in 1990 through Black Mark Production.
Black Mark Production, 1984/2019 (BMCD 666- 1). Bootleg. Made in Poland.


Tracklist:
1. Hades 05:03
2. Reaper 02:44
3. Necromansy 03:41
4. Sacrifice 03:17
5. In Conspirasy with Satan 02:29
6. Armageddon 02:32
7. Raise the Dead 03:42
8. War 03:34
Total playing time: 27:11 min.

Embroidered bordered woven patch.

110x35mm