“The
Jewel Throne”Dead Reptile Shrine is, instead of a
normal band, an ”aural phenomenon”. There are no members, no recordings in a
real studio and no real purpose. However, there is some knowledge.
“The
Jewel Throne”
”The Jewel Throne” is a collection of some of the most important Dead Reptile
Shrine recordings from 2000-2001.
It is a 3xCDR set, during which the most hardcore listeners will
probably start doubting their sanity. The first disc, “The Gates Into The
Underworld”, is the farthest from normal music. It is based on noisy abuse of
guitars, electronic drums and rituals involving improvised instruments,
multiple chanted voices, devastating screams, states of altered perception, attention and
invocations to the dead in ancient Egyptian
language. The second disc, “Pohjantähden Lapset” is epic shamanic black metal
with mostly very long tracks, composed of different parts – sometimes ambient,
sometimes pure ritual chanting recorded outside in the woodlands. The third
disc, “Helvetenskap”, is most likely the easiest listening but the least
interesting magically. It contains black metal, ambient, some experiments with
animal bones and a fascinating Countess cover (“Fire and Blood”) recorded live
with only acoustic guitar and screaming voice. The metal songs on
“Helvetenskap” are the most normal metal songs Dead Reptile Shrine shall ever
record.
Material included on “The Jewel Throne” was available in 2001 on various
self-released CDR’s and tapes, such as “The Gates Into The Underworld I-III”
CDR’s and “Helvetenskap” demo tape. In the beginning of 2002, coinciding with
new Dead Reptile Shrine releases, we wanted to make a powerful unified collection
of these old recordings, to present the intent of Dead Reptile Shrine
and to escape the trouble of handling a pile of demos and CDR’s with same
tracks but different covers, or the other way round. A very manic listener
might want to hunt out some of the old tapes because not all of the tracks are
on “The Jewel Throne”, but for most this collection is more than enough. The
name of the compilation is a tribute to Celtic Frost. You can find the lyrics
to most tracks here.
Dead Reptile Shrine /
Sanguine Chalice
This split demo from 2001 featured four
devastatingly raw black noise/metal and two ritual tracks on our side and four
tracks of abstract, dreamlike metal on Sanguine Chalice side, an obscure group
who hailed from the same town.
“Isth Narai Ja”
This fully ambient work was recorded in 2001 and was not originally intended
for individual release. It has three tracks, 66 minutes of the darkest shamanic
ambience. It was originally given as a bonus CDR to some people who ordered all
of the original “The Gates Into The Underworld” CDR’s.
However, because of the relaxing (!?) ambient style and higher
production quality than is normal for Dead Reptile Shrine recordings, it ended
up being very popular and was released in 2002 by Ixtlan Industries in a
nice-looking cardboard sleeve CDR edition, which included a Dead Reptile Shrine
sticker. Maybe more than a hundred copies were spread, but nowadays it is hard
to find. Ixtlan Industries has since made its productions available in digital format through the site Last.fm. Parts of "Isth Narai Ja" where included on the soundtrack of a Latvian
short movie “The Forester And The Sea”.
400 tapes of a remastered "Isth Narai Ja" were produced by Antihumanism (Antihumanism) in early 2008 in the continuing purpose of re-releases in limited tape editions.
“N.t.K.”
N.t.K. is a promo CDR from 2002 a.y.p.s., of which the original version had 10
tracks and lasted 45 minutes. Later some bonus tracks were added to make it
over 70 minutes long, which seems to be the more normal length for Dead Reptile
Shrine CDR/CD albums. It has the most emphasis on rock instrumentation and
metal songwriting that has been seen until now on Dead Reptile Shrine
recordings. The title stands for words Nokturnal, thelema and Krusifixion.
400 tapes of "N.t.K." were produced by Antihumanism (Antihumanism) in the beginning of 2008, being the long version including the bonus tracks plus it is also remastered.
Werewolf Records, being in a longtime fan of
Dead Reptile Shrine, released this 80-minute CD containing recordings from
2001-2005 a.y.p.s.. It was limited to 500 copies and was the first of the
label’s releases to be sold out. Out of respect for the label, mostly black
metal recordings were chosen for the CD, yet enough diverse experimental and
ritual sounds were included to lay down the alchemical prospects inherent in
our work. For parts of this album, Dead Reptile Shrine was a band containing
three members but this formation was later abandoned. The themes range from
magical journeys to philosophies of satanism and fascism. It contains our
favorite Dead Reptile Shrine recordings but split the opinions of the black
metal reviewers who were not expecting to stumble upon this kind of horror.
By the way, 300 tapes of this were produced by Antihumanism (Antihumanism) in the beginning of 2007. Get it while you can!
Here are samples from Aquarius Records’ page: 1 2 3
Dead
Reptile Shrine / Torturium
Werewolf thought he had seen somewhere a mention of a split between us
and comrades Torturium but we had never heard of such a thing. Instead, we
chose to interpret it as an omen. Recordings for the split LP were made mostly
in 2005, with some inclusions of earlier ritual ambience. The boundaries of the
LP were stretched to accommodate almost 25 minutes of pure Dead Reptile Shrine.
You can hear a sample of “Conan the Barbarian” and the angel Emmanuel. It was
released by Bestial Burst in May 2006 and is available from there at the moment
of this writing, though it will eventually run out of the decreed 500 copies.
“Sabbat”
Two ritual noise tracks from early Blutleuchte sessions and two sabbatic torments in similar vein from 2006 are included in this tape release by (Skulls of Heaven). It has received surprised reviews (no metal music included, this is rather like the noisy companion to Isth Narai Ja) and is destined to be a rare item. Note the brutal mastering by (again) our friends at Neuroscan.
“Blood Grail (the Infinite Equinox)”
The next installment in the series of astonishingly vile Dead Reptile Shrine tapes is "Blood Grail", which recapitulates a part of material from "The Gates Into the Underworld III" CDR and includes of course also brand new recordings. There is apparent both a ritualistic black metal style, and a ritual noise phenomenon. These tapes (Sabbat, Blood Grail) present a more brutal, incoherent and harshly aggressive side to Dead Reptile Shrine. Prepare for a blast of perception. Everything here is dedicated exclusively to the movement of the assemblage point. Evoke the sorcery powers of the dead and and the underworld! It was released by Antihumanism.
Candlelit rites and meditations amidst Northern woodlands, remembrance of war raging in the Eastern steppes, spirits descending in rage and a capitulation of ancient wisdom. "Burning Black Infinity" is the new epic Dead Reptile Shrine album, which contains mostly recordings in a defiantly astral, morbidly experimental and purely satanic black metal spirit. It is one of the most guitar-based Dead Reptile Shrine releases so far, since there is also a powerful corpus of acoustic tribal folk, some of which was unearthed from the archives of Die Blutleuchte project. As one would expect from the psychic followup to "A Journey Through the Darkest of Forests", it contains some of the best material so far but is destined to be the cult of those with obscure tastes and visions.
As of this writing, the tape by Antihumanism, in 400 copies, and the 2xLP by Cocainacopia, 333 items, have been spat out from the bowels of the netherworlds. Yet forthcoming is the CD on Skulls of Heaven. The tracklist is the same for all formats, but the artwork is a bit different especially for the occult and colourful vinyl version.
Forthcoming or
planned releases
“Sun of Circles and
Wood” 2xCD (Tumult)
“Praise Cemetary” 10" EP (Antihumanism)
“The Jewel Throne” 3xtape (re-release, Antihumanism)
