Damien - Shades From The Past (The Lost Tapes) 2LP

This spiffy 2LP (three sides of music, one side etched) compiles the barely released demo tapes of Sweden’s Damien. Not sure if they were influential on the Heavy Metal-into-Thrash underground, but this stuff will certainly appeal to those after a ‘Killed By Priest’ experience.

The recording quality is pretty ideal, not too rude but still crude, and it contains enough immediately satisfying early Heavy Metal riffs and leads, but still, I’m not sure if it’ll transcend the immediately fun budget HM category into the often relvisted classic realm of White Boy And The Average Rat Band.

Fans of Neat Records, Pentagram, Paul Di’Anno era Iron Maiden and The Def Leppard E.P. take note! - Nic