Baphomet: Leave the flesh

Tribute to a lost gem (if you ask me) in american death metal, Baphomet. Music is taken from their debut album and only album with name Baphomet and the bootleg liveclip is from 1991. Well, not the debut album as I much later learned, but back in 1992 it seemed like it was their debut album. Compared to the real debut one, "dead shall inherit" sounds much heavier, and better produced. Dark, doomy sound, yet somehow so polished, in a fitting way. Kind of weird, but also ... great, production.
I didn't find Baphomet through the usual tape trading, and didn't even first hear it in radio or anything like that which was very common way, too. I found them through browsing music shops' metal vinyl catalogs and simply estimating unknown band names and album titles - this sounded promising enough, so I added the title into my big bro's "vinyls you could buy". It was like new metal research through names & titles. :) Bro is 10 years older than me, so back then he already had a career going and as he was record collector (heavy metal mainly, and he had noted my growing knowledge of extreme metal) and happily bought big bunch of vinyls few times a year according to my suggestions, back in those days. Truly awesome days from music fan's point of view, for sure! I still remember few massive vinyl packages, all those early 1990s death metal gems ... awww yeah. Also most of my "buy this one" hints turned out to be good hits so everyone won. Baphomet was one not good but excellent example, especially as I knew nothing about the band beforehand, just the name of band and album. The moment the vinyl started playing and the eerie intro ... as it blasted into 'the suffering' ... wow, now this is something really good, and kind of different, too. The drumming style, weird blast beats at times, no snare used in all the blasts or that's how it sounded anyway, what, weird ... and it really works! Great vocals, great memorable riffs, the album is an amazing death metal ride from start to finish. Also one of the first death metal albums I remember calling as "brutal death metal" back in those days - Suffocation was probably the very first, methinks.
I listened a lot to the 'dead shall inherit' album, I mean a lot. It's an album that still sounds great. Album full of songs that really stick to mind. I was so disappointed when the name change happened - I didn't like Germany's Baphomet at all and it felt bad that a band I liked a lot, loses its' name to another band with same name, and a band I didn't like. Bleh. So, ... fast forward about two years, in the meanwhile there was even the surprising music video "deliver me unto pain" by Banished, ... and there was this moment, as I had hardly any cash (was in the army days then) I had to decide in record shop would I buy Banished's 'deliver me unto pain' vinyl or Pungent Stench's 'club mondo bizarro' CD with lousy army wage. I didn't have cash to buy the both and vinyl was trickier to carry as I had the army bags with me etc. I ended up buying PS album as I was a big PS fan after their two amazing albums (didn't know they had a new album until I just happened to see it in store) - I later regretted the decision, even that I did like PS album after initial shock (I was initially disappointed they too were going towards death'n'roll instead of being death metal - the fact aside that it's at least death'n'roll I did learn to like, unlike Entombed's death'n'roll released which I never quite liked). I later got that Banished album too, and that's when I really regretted not buying it. It was the only time I saw Banished album on sale in any format.
Such a poor timing for band's name change and second album - that combined with the fact that it was totally different world back then. You really didn't get the information about the bands from nowhere else than magazines, zines, occasional radio and TV shows and that's it. No wonder it first seemed that Baphomet simply quitted. Then also another fact, that the death metal dive was already going on and for few years it felt that "death metal is dead", really sad time musically speaking for couple of years as death metal fan. For me personally Incantation's "forsaken mourning..." and especially their "diabolical conquest", together with Malevolent Creation's "the fine art of murder", Gorguts' "obscura", Hate Eternal's "conquering the throne" and few other releases (not too many though) in 1998-1999 started restoring my faith that death metal is not dead after all, that it wasn't just those golden years from late 1980s to early 1990s. Well, Banished's album ... it's a good release, the band had clearly grown, but the album had an unfortunate timing combined with the name change, too, as well as death metal briefly dying out ... sad that the very promising band pretty much disappeared after that. I always blamed it on the name change back then, it felt like they wrote their destiny - they got banished from the scene. Pity.
Anyway, enjoy the video!

[@chelseakuphal]

Quality work pal!! You need to research S M Zeus!!!

[@derjeniche5409]

Crushing perfection

[@hocamlar]

Oh man the red fog...