Morbid Tales

The debut by Tom G. Warrior and Martin Eric Ain, who had just dissolved Hellhammer, with Stephen Priestly sitting in on drums — all three of them out of the same Swiss band. Recording and mixing were finished inside a single week in October 1984 at Caet Studio in West Berlin, produced by Horst Müller, who had engineered Hellhammer's Apocalyptic Raids EP. Noise International issued the 12-inch as N 0017. The combination of slow riffing, heavy distortion and a voice somewhere between a shout and a groan did not sound like the thrash of the day or like the NWOBHM. "Into the Crypts of Rays", "Procreation (of the Wicked)" and "Nocturnal Fear" are the tracks that both death metal and black metal have gone on naming as foundations. The running order here is the six-track original of 1984; masters from the CD era onwards append songs from the Emperor's Return EP.