So I arrive to a local Metal shop in which I frequently buy. The thing that is extremely funny about it is that every time I go, the following events always occur and in the same way and order. As I come in the guy says hi and he asks me if I’m looking for something specific, when I say I’m just looking for some good Black Metal he immediately offers me a copy of Immortal’s At the Heart of Winter, after politely explaining him that I already have it, he proceeds to offer me a copy of Siebenbürgen’s Plagued Be Thy Angel. I’m not kidding when I’m telling you this guy does that every single time I go; it’s like if he has no memory and no knowledge whatsoever on Black Metal, so he just does that with every single person who asks for a decent Black Metal album, I don't know why he chose those two though. Anyway, you want to know why I have a copy of Siebenbürgen’s Plagued Be Thy Angel? Exactly; the guy offered it to me like 20 times so I thought: “This one must be brilliant” Anyway even after I bought it from him, the guy continues to offer me the album, every single day I go to his shop.

After the now solid routine; he proceeds to show me the new stuff he received; the last time I was there he handed me some releases by the Greek label ISO666; after browsing the albums one caught my attention. Blackdeath’s Bottomless Armageddon. I had heard some nice stuff about the band and the cover was really cool; an almost exact replica of Satanic Warmaster’s Strength and Honour, with the only difference being the skull inside the serpent’s ring and that it is embrossed in red, thing that looks extremely cool. Anyway I started to consider it’s purchase when suddenly I noticed it was limited to a 1000 pieces and that I was holding handnumbered copy 510. Wow, I thought, I don’t have a lot of hand numbered limited albums; this one must be cool ! OK; check the previous statement; I’m deducing that because this album is limited to a 1000 copies it must be amazing right? Well my friends; I was on a terrible mistake; that day I learned a good lesson: Extremely limited albums don’t mean they’re extremely cool.

This is supposed to be an album originally recorded in February 1997 and restored and mastered in October 2002. The only thing that is new is Para Bellum’s vocals which were reordered in 2002.

The music is low quality run of the mill Black Metal; nothing stands out in the album. The production is horrible; I enjoy raw and difficult listening production a lot in Black Metal, but the production in this one is simply not enjoyable; first mistake is the vocals; they’re extremely high in the mix, plus Para Bellum’s growls are terrible, in an attempt to sound original and fresh he simply sounds annoying. The guitars sound dull and the riffing is simply far from being good; one or two nice riffs thrown here and there but overall they sound sloppy and plain boring. As for the drums the only thing you’ll hear is a constant snare beat; I thought drums had cymbals too, but it looks like Blackdeath hadn’t discovered them yet in 1997.

So the music is extremely boring, the production is terrible and the vocals are annoying; PLUS this is a limited edition! Good that only 1000 motherfuckers (including me) got ripped out with this album.

I don’t know how the rest of the stuff of this Russian band sounds, but if it’s similar to this album I don’t want to find out.

Anyway, the only good thing about this one is that I can sell it through E-Bay to one of those kvlt kiddies that shell out hundreds of dollars for a bootleg that features Burzum playing live (haha suckers); I’ll just have to add the magic words in the description: "Limited to 1000 handnumbered copies".