Description
Blessed Realm were a doom band who originated around the time of what a lot of people might call the golden age of the British doom scene. The early 90s were a fruitful time for doom metal and in the wake of the famous Saint Vitus/Cathedral tour and the big three of Paradise Lost My Dying Bride and Anathema tons of death metal bands discovered Witchfinder General and slowed down their recycled Massacre riffs by half. The first few tracks on this collection come from their first demo which to me is their best material (probably cos a dub of this demo was the first thing I ever heard by them!). It’s great ultra-mournful and minimalistic doom metal but with a superb ear for a melody. I love the buried and sorrowful vocals. This is what DOOM sounds like. The next demo represented here is the Chasing The Dragon demo which is still proper heavy doom but a wee bit more upbeat and which maybe suffers a wee bit from a drum machine instead of live drums. Return To Zero is maybe their most well-known and widely-distributed demo and by this point (1998) the band were full-on doom rock. I guess stoner rock was in full flow at this point and this material reminds me of the great (and forgotten) YEAR ZERO: relying less on heavy-duty slow riffs the tunes on here are more up-tempo rockers in line with Trouble’s later stuff….they were definitely listening to loads of The Obsessed I reckon an all! The final demo Crawl takes the doom rock idea even further and it’s a shame the album (slated for release on Miskatonic Foundation) never happened cos it could’ve been a belter. Luckily the band persisted in wanting this collection out there and thanks to Sealey of Iron Void it’s happened! Really chuffed to be involved with this and to lend my questionable expertise to proceedings. 500 copies tri-fold digipak. Great original art by BVRSERK and all the lettering was very slowly and painstakingly hand-drawn by me not that you’d ever be able to notice ha! You can also get copies from Sealey of Iron Void and the band direct. Support the doom scene!
