Graveland - Topic

Graveland was brought to life in 1992 by Rob Darken (Robert Fudali). The main musical inspiration was the 80's black metal like Venom or Bathory. First two demos issued in 1992 were „Necromanteion” and „Drunemeton”. Both materials were recorded in rather mid-tempos when compared to the typical black metal style of compositions. They were full of dark depth that was typical for the old doom metal stuff. Despite that, both demos were more close to the emerging black metal scene bacause of the typical vocal style, guitar sound and the presence of gloomy keyboard lines. At that time Darken was responsible for all the Graveland material recorded. In 1993 all had changed not only in the band but also in the whole Polish bm scene. In that year Behemoth released their second demo „The Return of the Northern Moon” (with intro nad outro made by Darken) and Graveland a mile stone entitled „In the Glare of Burning Churches” together with „Epilogue” demo issued a bit earlier. The band was joined by Capricornus (Maciej Dąbrowski) who bacame responsible for drumming. I think there is no need to tell you how important was that demo for the whole scene.