Since May 2024, I've been running a discography club in the SC discord where nearly every week as a group we listen to a selected band's discography and discuss it throughout the week. I feel like it's been about time I've brought it over officially to the subreddit as well. So going forward, we'll have discog club be an event in both the discord and here on shreddit, feel free to participate in either and/or both discussion spaces. The general schedule will be 2 weeks for a band with a longer discography, a 1 week shorter one, and a week off. There might be slight changes to this but it will always be 3 weeks on, 1 week off to give us all a break from proscribed listening.
To largely save us from the full headache of trawling through lots of garbage in discographies, some of them will be abbreviated, especially for older bands who later reformed or for bands who just have very long discographies. The aim of this is to broaden our horizons either of bands that you might not be familiar with or to listen to deeper cuts from bands you are familiar with but might not have heard all of their releases of before. All prior iterations of this since can be found here if you'd like to see what has been done before.
The lord Satan, magic night, the believer, offer your body
Black candle's fire surrounds you, sacrifice young animals
Blazing spell on the alter, possessed the devils flying
Freezing your soul in pain & hate, you've got a fall of hell
Torment in the Pentagram
In the sea of blood, storm of spells
Torment in the Pentagram
Hello everyone and welcome to the inaugural session of Discography Club - Season 3! For the first time, and going forward, this will be held in parallel on discord and on the subreddit and around the world. Now I promised all of you back in November a legendary Japanese band and I am not one to disappoint so let's kick the year off strongly with Sabbat!
Founded in 1984 in Kuwana, Japan under the name Evil by Gezol, Ozny, and Valvin (soon replaced by Samm) they played live shows and in 1987 recorded their farewell show, later released as Live Curse, as Gezol and Samm suffered a death in the family and decided to discontinue the band. However a few years later in 1990, Gezol decided to start playing live again and reformed the band under the now legendary Sabbat name with Zorugelion on drums and Temis Osmond on guitar and other than 2 more guitar switches, Satoshi Ishida in 2007, and Ginoir in 2021, this would be the lineup going forward.
Sabbat have more or less always played a style of evil sounding black/thrash/speed influenced by fellow first wave bands like Venom, Bulldozer, and Bathory but with their own unique spin to it, especially in regards to Gezol's unique shrieking vocal style. They are also well known for Gezol's revealing band photos and stage getup as well as for their insane number of EPs and split, having done a split with I believe every band that's ever existed in history at some point or other (I exaggerate but not by much). For the purposes of this listening we'll just do the designated full lengths but don't let that stop you from picking and choosing some of the non LP releases and checking them out, there's so many.
So the schedule will be as follows:
- Week 1 (1/4-11): Envenom, Evoke, Disembody, Fetishism, The Dwelling
- Weel 2 (1/11-18): Karisma, Satanasword, Karmagmassacre, Sabbatrinity, Sabbaticult
Discuss week 2's listening here
This is a good idea with a band that has a great discography.
Very strong and consistent that's for sure, now for their non LP releases I can't speak but I'm assuming they're also very good
The Asian Demonslaught compilation has most of their pre-debut material and it's awesome. Worth it if you like the rest of their discography for sure
Good call on that, I'll give that a listen if I get the chance. Was going to hit Black Up Your Soul too
Discuss week 1's listening here
INTRO: I told Mgrier that I was going to get very good at metal by doing these discography runs. Sabbat was always funny to me becasue I knew them in relation to "music for maniacs" but not becasue they had that term at all for a call sign rather they always looked like they made music for maniacs.
Envenom (1991):
I do not know where I was in 1991 but it was certainly not listening to Sabbat. In fact even though I wasn't of the age where I could purchase music on my own free will, this would certainly not be sold where I was living. I don't know how popular a Japanese thrash / metal band would be where I lived but I am going to guess less than Pearl Jam's Ten. This is also why we have the internet and a reason to sit down with a 45 minute record with four songs being instrumental. Had I heard this at the time I think my mind would have melted though and I think "King of Hell" would be my favorite song of all time. A little later I would be very much into 90s punk but i think this would have poisoned the well of what I thought was the fastest and most out there music and everything would feel tame in comparison.
Sabbat is a band that I've been aware of for a long time but never really made an effort to dive into their material besides a few random tracks, though I was aware of their status as a cult band for people in the know, with undeniable amounts of street cred. I see now the error in my ways.
This was a busy week for me so I only managed to hit Envenom and Evoke.
I never doubted they would be good, but for some reason I didn't expect these dudes to riff as hard as they do on these albums. I was under the impression their sound would lean way more towards Black Metal and was pleasantly surprised to find they are actually very thrashy, while having a few somewhat melodic licks thrown into some tracks to break up the savageness of their primitive black/thrash sound.
Looking forward to dive deeper this next week and hopefully having the time to go through all of the albums in the assignment, but for now I just want to thank you for this initiative. Even after all these years Shreddit still keeps being an awesome resource for expanding my knowledge and finding amazing music. Cheers!
Always good to hear! Hopefully you get some more time to go through more of their discog this week even if you don't finish. Positive of a dedicated thread is you can always come back and provide updates to your thoughts as you go through them even after it's "over".
I have always appreciated how much they thrash though, gives them so much energy.
I don't have the most to say about each specific album, but I do think generally this week Sabbat improved every release. Better more intricate sound writing with more interesting guitar harmonies and leads, and Gezol perfects his vocal delivery from a somewhat one note grunt to integrating shrieks and other styles.
The Dwelling is very impressive, a Venom style move showing they can write long epics but done much more successfully Imo. It's not one I'll put on all the time due to its length and concept but it is very impressive.
Black up your soul was a cool comp but far too long that's for sure.
Fanking: Fetishism > Dwelling > Evoke > Disembody > Envenom