• Far from complete, and definitely in no particular order, here are some of our favorite albums from artists of many genres and time periods. Some may be very known to you, maybe you also listened to a lot of these same bands while growing up, as we did. The crazy excitement of youth and the aching boredom, some of these were a soundtrack to our teenage years. Through the reckless parties, sex, violence, and all the tainted fruits of life. Others carried us into our work with Mourning the Ancient, some of these bands we've even come to know personally or have had the opportunity to interview. Others we might not have liked as much, except for maybe they played during certain times in our lives, they 'grew' on us as they say. I'm sure you have more than a few favorites like this too.

    As you may estimate, this is a huge undertaking, so we'll be adding more and more material every update. Hopefully, there will be some gem here that had slipped by you, and through these pages, you discover musical treasure as we have.


    Page I

  • Ripping Corpse

    Title: Dreaming with the Dead

    Label: Kraze/Maze America

    Date: 1991

    Track listing: (favorites marked with an '*')

    [1] Sweetness*
    [2] Dreaming with the Dead
    [3] Anti God*
    [4] Glorious Depravity
    [5] Beyond Humanity*
    [6] Feeling Pleasure Through Pain
    [7] Through the Skin to the Soul
    [8] Rift of Hate*
    [9] Deeper Demons
    [10] Sickness of Will
    [11] Chugging Pus*
    [12] Seduction of the Innocent

    [Ripping Corpse. A seldomly heard name in the world of death metal, yet one of its greatest. Musically this band is top-notch. Brutal, technical and melodic. The singer would get my vote as having one of the coolest sounding voices in death metal. He also looks like a madman is his picture below, which is always a plus in the death metal world!]

    [inlay]


  • Resurrection

    Title: Embalmed Existence

    Label: Nuclear Blast

    Date: 1993

    Track listing: (favorites marked with an '*')

    [1] Disembodied
    [2] Rage Within*
    [3] Embalmed Existence
    [4] Smell of Blood
    [5] Torture Chamber
    [6] Eyes of Blind
    [7] Test of Fate
    [8] Pure Be Damned
    [9] War Machine*

    [One thing memorable about this release is that almost every track starts with a very bizarre talking bit, whether these relate to the songs lyrics, I'm not sure. One thing is certain though, they were a great death metal band. My favorite track, 'Rage Within', was also released on a the Nuclear Blast compilation 'Death is Just the Beginning, except in a raw, demo form, which I liked better than the finished track here. Surprisingly the remake of the Kiss song 'War Machine' is quite good as well.]

    [inlay]


  • Master's Hammer

    Title: Ritual

    Label: Osmose Productions

    Date: 1990 (recorded)/1994 (released)

    Track listing: (favorites marked with an '*')

    [1] Intro
    [2] Pad modly*
    [3] Razdy z nas*
    [4] Ritual
    [5] Geniove*
    [6] Cerna svatozar
    [7] Vecny navrat
    [8] Jama pekel*
    [9] Zapalili jsme Onen svet
    [10] Vykoupeni
    [11] Utok*

    [It doesn't get much better than the black metal legends Master's Hammer. Incredibly unique, nothing compares to this Czech band.]

    [inlay - walking canes, a guy wearing a tophat and another calling himself 'necrocock'!
    You would never guess that this is one of black metal's greatest bands.]


  • Master's Hammer

    Title: The Filemnice Occultist

    Label: Osmose Productions/JL America

    Date: 1993

    Track listing: (favorites marked with an '*')

    [1] Overture
    [2] Among the Hills a Winding Way*
    [3] I Don't Want, Sirs to Pester*
    [4] A Dark Forest Spreads All Around
    [5] That Magnificent Deer Has Vanished
    [6] My Captain
    [7] By the Misery of Fate I'm Haunted
    [8] Oh, My Precious Sir
    [9] Everything That Just on My Whim
    [10] Glory Herr Hauptman
    [11] Sucharda's Home

    [My first taste of Master's Hammer (and probably like most people in North America) was on a JL America Compilation cassette. The cassette contained the insane sounding and ultra unique track 'Among the Hills a Winding Way'. The song titles are as strange as anything you'll ever find in any genre. The track titles, some with typos, like the album name, which should have said 'Jilemnice' instead of 'Filemnice', some with bad English, and some just downright eccentric and strange. While not as good as the superb 'Ritual', it's still a great piece of black metal.]

    [inlay]


  • Rigor Mortis

    Title: Freaks

    Label: Metal Blade Records

    Date: 1989

    Track listing: (favorites marked with an '*')

    [1]Freaks*
    [2] Cattle Mutilation
    [3] The Haunted
    [4] Six Feet Under/Worms of the Earth
    [5] Chained in the Attic

    [Ah, Rigor Mortis' 'Freaks'. How very insensitive. Shame, shame. That aside, a great band and a cool EP.]

    [inlay - 'Doyle Bright', on the far right, might have the strangest hair cut of anyone in metal.]


  • RAHOWA

    Title: Cult of the Holy War

    Label: Resistance Records

    Date: 1995

    Track listing: (favorites marked with an '*')

    [1]Preludium in G
    [2] Man Against Time*
    [3] When America Goes Down*
    [4] March of the Dead
    [5] Hall of the Heroes*
    [6] In the Fires of 1945*
    [7] The Last Battalion
    [8] Anvil of Crom
    [9] Might is Right
    [10] RAHOWA
    [11] God is Dead*
    [12] The Snow Fell*
    [13] Ode to a Dying People

    [Sometimes it's best to just listen to the music of a band you like and never learn anything about the band themselves. Such is the case with RAHOWA, whose vocalist (George Burdi) was imprisoned for going against the system, and then got out and joined the very system he'd been fighting. I could never listen to this the same way, or appreciate it for that matter, after learning about this detestable fact. What a shame too, as this was a great album. Now... like a glass of wine with a fly in it. Not to mention the fly is covered in cyanide and ebola viruses!]

    [inlay]


  • Funeral

    Title: Tragedies

    Label: Arctic Serenades Records

    Date: 1995

    Track listing: (favorites marked with an '*')

    [1]Taarene*
    [2] Under Ebony Shades*
    [3] Demise
    [4] When Nightfall Clasps
    [5] Moment in Black

    [Here is one of my all-time favorite female vocalists. Funeral is a mixture of death metal vocals, which are also done superbly, and fantastic female vocals, full of somber emotion and atmosphere. The CD will always take me back to the fall of 1995. We used to listen to this a lot in the early days of Mourning the Ancient, while doing, or trying to do, our photography. This was like a soundtrack to those times. A rare and true masterpiece. Sentimentality aside, there's nothing better than this in the genre. Nothing!]

    [CD back]


  • In the Woods

    Title: Heart of the Ages

    Label: Misanthropy Records

    Date: 1995

    Track listing: (favorites marked with an '*')

    [1] Yearning the Seeds of a New Dimension*
    [2] Heart of the Ages
    [3] ...In the Woods
    [4] Prologue
    [5] Moments of...
    [6] Epilogue
    [7] Mourning the Death of Aase
    [8] Wotan's Return
    [9] Pigeon
    [10] The Divinity of Wisdom

    [Here is a great release from this diverse band. The first track, 'Yearning the Seeds of a New Dimension' is classic!]

    [CD back]


  • Impaler

    Title: Charnel Deity

    Label: Deaf Records

    Date: 1992

    Track listing: (favorites marked with an '*')

    [1] The Dead Know Dreams
    [2] Avowal to Hell
    [3] Imminence of the Final Punishment
    [4] Malignant Dreams
    [5] Accursed Domain
    [6] Internally Rotting
    [7] Impaler of Souls
    [8] Astral Corpse*
    [9] Engulfed
    [10] Total Carnage
    [11] Repel your Faith

    [Here is one of those bands where I only really like one song on the whole album, but that one song is awesome. Impaler was from England, and that's about the extent of my knowledge of this rather obscure death metal band.]

    [CD back]


  • Overkill

    Title: The Years of Decay

    Label: Atlantic Records

    Date: 1989

    Track listing: (favorites marked with an '*')

    [1] Time to Kill
    [2] Elimination*
    [3] I Hate
    [4] Nothing to Die For
    [5] Playing with Spiders/Skullkrusher*
    [6] Birth of Tension
    [7] Who Tends the Fire
    [8] The Years of Decay
    [9] E.vil N.ever D.ies

    [What metalhead didn't listen to Overkill growing up in the 80s/90s? Overkill used to always stop in Omaha for their tours, which seemed to be every summer. One concert was cancelled after something blew up and they couldn't continue the show, so they promised that they would return after their tour for a special show for everyone there, and they did. Overkill has created a handful of great tunes, but nothing compares to the legendary song 'Skullkrusher'. This is truly one of the coolest metal tracks ever made. Even further praise, it may even be on my list of the top ten songs of all time.]

    [CD inlay]


  • Cryptic Might

    Title: Circle of Blood

    Label: V7 Records

    Date: 2006

    Track listing: (favorites marked with an '*')

    [1] Black Sun Rising*
    [2] In Times of War
    [3] Outlaw's Life
    [4] Over the River (and Into the Trees)
    [5] Circle of Blood
    [6] Salute to the Princess
    [7] The Watcher
    [8] Curse of the Banshee
    [9] Cleaning Flame

    [One of the more recent entries into this list, Cryptic Might is a new great for me. The song 'Black Sun Rising' is amongst my top faves of this list.]

    [CD inlay]


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