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Review: Abbey of the Ancient Ones - Abbey of the Ancient Ones
Abbey of the Ancient Ones
abbey-of-the-ancient-ones.bandcamp.com
Abbey of the Ancient Ones

Label: Independent
Year released: 2024
Duration: 47:49
Tracks: 9
Genre: Black/Heavy Metal

Rating:
3.5/5


Review online: January 27, 2025
Reviewed by: Luxi Lahtinen
Readers' Rating
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Rated 3.83/5 (76.67%) (6 Votes)
Review

This is a release with a very interesting history. Abbey of the Ancient Ones technically recorded some of the tracks on this demo way back in 1984-85, but due to some serious tragedy on their end that I don't feel at too much liberty to go into here, it took the remaining members until 2024 to actually complete and record the tracks in question. Unsurprisingly, this is a very simple and primitive old-school sound that's best described these days as blackened heavy metal, here sounding something akin to early Grave Digger and early Bathory having a violent skirmish with each other. The recording is as rough as you'd expect a mid-80s demo to sound, and the songs themselves are sloppy and amateurish to the extreme, but that's exactly the kind of energy you want from a sound like this, I think. We live in a time where so many bands, even black metal bands, feel the need to have overly polished, ProTools-laden releases that often sound lifeless and dull, so while I'd struggle to call this great or even good half the time, there's something infectious and fun in just how dirty and atavistic Abbey of the Ancient Ones are, literally the result of kids bashing around so hard it'd take decades for the universe to allow their unholy hymns to see the light of day. I guess we'll never know where the band would have gone from here, but even if this ends up being their only release, I'd say it's a hell of a swansong to go out on.

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