Incantation / Archgoat - Rehearsal & Live 1990 / Jesus Spawn
Let me begin this review by saying that this release is for die-hard devotees of Incantation and Archgoat only. If you’re merely a casual fan or someone who is curious about the bands on this split, I recommend checking out their other work instead. This material was, up until now, very rare, mostly because it’s so old. Back in the ’90s, rehearsal and live recordings were uncommon to see officially released. The overwhelming majority of live recordings were bootlegs and had to be obtained by knowing someone who recorded the show or knew the person who did. Most of the live and rehearsal recordings from that era were poorly recorded and usually even the best of them still sounded like shit. Demo tapes had poor sound quality because bands didn’t have the ability to do a high quality recording on a shoestring budget. Today’s bands have it much easier because they can create a high quality recording that would have cost thousands of dollars in the 1990s on a budget considerably smaller. All that said, the sound quality on this split is horrible. The recordings were done using the technology of the time and on an almost nonexistent budget. The Incantation half of this is composed of two rehearsal tracks (a cover of Hellhammer’s “The Third of the Storms,” and “Profanation”) and three live songs (the Hellhammer cover, “Profanation,” and “Unholy Massacre,” recorded at the Cheers Club in Nyack, New York, from Incantation’s first live performance). Of the five, the live songs sound marginally better, but that isn’t saying much. The Archgoat half of this is a repress of the Jesus Spawn demo tape. It’s much more listenable, but still suffers from poor sound quality (it was probably a 4-track recording on an analog tape and then reproduced onto cheap cassettes). If you’re a die-hard fan of either of these bands, this release might be worth it to you as a document of how they sounded back in the very beginning of their careers. The recordings are rare, and though the sound quality is raw and unrefined, this is historically relevant, showing two bands in their formative stages, no more, no less.
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