Storm of the Light's Bane

This is the second album, made after Johan Norman replaced John Zwetsloot on guitar. The sleeve painting is again by Kristian "Necrolord" Wåhlin. Where it sits is this: it holds the ideology and the atmosphere of black metal while taking in the melody of the melodic death metal swelling in the same country at the same moment. Metal Hammer noted that the sound of 1980s heavy metal is plainly mixed into it as well. Jon Nödtveidt said that everything the band made was connected to death in one way or another, but that this was not a record whose songs follow a single story. It became the last full-length album before a long silence. Nödtveidt was imprisoned in 1997, and the third record, Reinkaos, did not appear until 2006. A Europe-only digipak limited to 500 copies was issued in 1995; unfolded it formed a cross, with the lyrics printed inside. The running order here is the original's as printed; the Japanese edition adds "Feathers Fell" as its fifth track.