Are you a giant death metal nerd? Then you need to hear this very obscure demo from a great death metal band that never really got the recognition that they deserve… and then check out my full series on exactly this topic right here.
Let’s talk about Dark Prophecies for a second here. I cannot find a damn thing online about Polish death doom band Dark Prophecies, despite drummer Peter Kodzorowski playing on their 1995 On the Edge of Black Eternity demo.
For those unfamiliar, Kodzorowski has been the drummer for the Polish progressive metal band Riverside since 2001 and was a part of the Polish death metal band Hate from 1992 to 2002. So you’d think Dark Prophecies would’ve come up in interviews or on his Wikipedia page or something, but nah, nothing.
The mystery around Dark Prophecies doesn’t just stop with Kodzorowski either. Their second and final demo On the Edge of Black Eternity from 1995 featured a guitarist only known as Ralph that also played in Hate between 1995 and 2001 before disappearing from metal, and vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Mina G Laurent, whose sole contribution to metal was on this 1995 demo. So total mysteries here.
Dark Prophecies had one demo prior to On the Edge of Black Eternity called Vergil in 1991, which you cannot find anywhere. There’s one really low-quality scan of the demo’s cover on Metal Archives, and that’s it. I can’t find a single way to hear this, I can’t find it on Discogs, I cannot find anything about it, so I don’t even know if Ralph and Laurent were also on that demo or what the case is here.
I do know that On the Edge of Black Eternity is very good, but I cannot speak at all to Vergil. This is all especially insane to me because On the Edge of Black Eternity is pretty damn good, especially for a demo. The writing is plenty engaging, the artwork looks pretty professional, the sound quality is solid, and overall this is just a pretty underrated release in the world of death doom.
On the Edge of Black Eternity is nowhere to be found online aside from YouTube. There appears to have been a reissue in 2000 via Hate Productions in Poland, though that quote-unquote label doesn’t have a website and this reissue seems to be the only thing that they ever released, so I kind of almost hesitate to call this a reissue.
Dark Prophecies is really difficult dig anything up about, which again is a shame because On the Edge of Black Eternity is pretty good.
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