To Mega Therion

The second album does not simply make the debut's sound bigger; it widens the instrumentation. It was recorded between 14 and 28 September 1985 at Casablanca studio in Berlin, produced by Horst Müller with Tom G. Warrior, and released by Noise International as the 12-inch N 0031. Timpani, horns and a female voice come into the arrangements — in the handover from "Innocence and Wrath" into "The Usurper", and in the shape of "Dawn of Megiddo" and "Necromantical Screams". Against them "Circle of the Tyrants" and "Jewel Throne" keep the straight drive of the first record, so weight and grandeur sit on the same album. The gatefold carries H. R. Giger's 1977 painting Satan I on the front and Victory III inside. It is regularly named among the defining metal albums of the 1980s. The running order here is the 1985 original's as printed.