format: LP
year: 1980
country: Finland
label: JP Music
#: JPLP 8003
info: Insert w/ lyrics
style: Heavy Metal, Doom Metal
Side A:
Side B:
True Story-time: I came across this LP for the very first time at a record fair, in an ancient era known as The Late Nineties. At first I was quite struck by the fantasic, sinister and simultaneously surreal cover art and got ready to take a chance on it despite the rather hefty price tag ...but quickly the sceptic in me pulled the breaks: Wait, there's NO WAY this album can be as cool as it looks. I've been fooled before and THIS TIME I'm not falling for it! It's probably just some jazz/prog/artsy crap again... It took me another couple of years before I finally dared to give it a try, this time as a cheapo CD reissue and the rest is history.
It's hard to describe the sound of "Envoy Of Death" to the uninitiated, because SARCOFAGUS in general and this their sophomore masterpiece in particular is the kind of archetype usually employed to describe other acts travelling through the Heavy Metal twilight zone - an elementary particle in the world of obscure Steel physics if you will, and you just don't break apart those things easily (Bad things tend to happen). It has its own unique place in the HM timeline and the only thing we can say with certainty is that it came after "Sabotage" and "Rocka Rolla" but before "Land Of Mystery" and "To Mega Therion". When you specifically focus on the guitar riffs it's really difficult to draw comparisons to anything similar going on in the rest of the world (i.e. in the UK) at the time or earlier. The chords might be familiar, but the construction and beat have an outlandish, almost claustrophobic feel to them, in turn enhancing the menacing, darkened vibe of the whole album. While certainly rustic, they are never crude or amateurish.
As you may have noticed above, I have no problem with cathergorizing "Envoy Of Death" as a Doom Metal album. Monstrous tunes like "Envoy Of Death", "Insane Rebels" and "Stolen Salvation" may not have quite the groove of Sabbath nor the slow of Vitus, but they do come with all the apocalyptic markers of that genre. The first time you hear the chorus riff in "Die To Win" you might feel it sounds 'corny' but after a few rotations of the full album it makes perfect sense and in this new black light it elevates to Twisted instead ...and then there is That track, the one that more than anything else have forever cemented the band's name into the history of Dark & Evil Metal lore: "Black * Contract".
(* = insert FUCKING here)
To do this composition justice I would have to write an article far longer than any other review I've ever done on the site and I would still probably fail to convey the sheer Lovecraftian HORROR that this track invokes. The Egypto-Doomic riffs acompanying the monologue that wraps up the whole "Envoy.." saga are some of the most destructive ones of the entire 80's - which only just started! Angel Witch might have made some vaguely similar moves the year or 2 before, but not even those icons where ever this intense. After this part is where things get DARK, and the following 2/3rds of the song has more in common with the most experimental and sinister bands of the 70's like Magma, Faust or even The Residents. Much of it is however carried on the back of a mighty morbid doom riff worthy of Switzerland's finest (CF or Giger - take your pick). This finale will no doubt leave you exhausted on first listen, but in an electrifying, post-coital kind of way. If being raped by an ancient Egyptian god count as coitus that is...
As one of my all-time favourite Heavy Metal albums it has proven very difficult for me to write about, as well as very hard to stop ranting about once I got started, so we'll end here. As a final note, it has of course been reissued a number of times, most recently in 2021 by trusty ol' NWN so there's no escaping the mandatory acquisition of this iconic platter.