Armoured Angel

Release Date: 03/12/2021
Format: LP
Label: Hells Headbangers – 2020 / HELLS MLP 054
Release type: 45 RPM Reissued/Remastered Blue Colored Vinyl LP Pressing

As longtime fans of the band, HELLS HEADBANGERS is proud to present a special vinyl pressing of ARMOURED ANGEL's Demo MCMXCV. Formed in 1982 and disbanding in 2001, ARMOURED ANGEL were Australia's very first extreme metal band - and for many years, one of its only ones. Originally released in 1995 on cassette tape, Demo MCMXCV was indeed a demo for what was to be the band’s debut album. Most interestingly, this four-song recording was done with none other than Killing Joke's Jaz Coleman, who lent a strange-yet-sympathetic ear to ARMOURED ANGEL's idiosyncratic style of largely mid-tempo death metal. Perhaps it was Coleman influencing the trio or the other way around, but Demo MCMXCV maintains a certain buoyancy, an almost hovering aspect, which renders their characteristic crunch even more hummable than before – and no amount of power nor poignancy is sacrificed in the process. And the demo closes in dramatic fashion with the swirling "Oriax," arguably one of the best goth-metal songs never heard…if goth-metal was as heavy as a tank. Alas, these recordings never blossomed into ARMOURED ANGEL's long-awaited debut album, which would emerge in 1999 (and with a different producer) as Angel of the Sixth Order, but Demo MCMXCV is an extremely fascinating snapshot of "what could have been" and a crucial piece of the band’s canon. HELLS HEADBANGERS will now release it on 12" vinyl for the first time ever, with silkscreened art on Side B.

1. Thy Blood Eterne
2. Gulka
3. Way Of Sorrows
4. Oriax