DARKNESS - The Demos 3 LP Boxset HRR 027, limited to 500 copies, 24 page booklet - Armageddon/ Death Squad/ Phantasmagoria - Intro/ Victims/ Infernal Declaration/ Armageddon - Intro/ The Evil Curse/ Hear The City - Iron Force/ Torment Declaration/ Kingdom Of Death - The Gates/ Beyond The Gates Of Death/ Death Squad - Armageddon/ Legacy Of Blood/ Titanic War - The Gates/ Armageddon/ Legacy Of Blood - Beyond The Gates Of Death/ Titanic War - Invasion Sector 12/ Critical Threshold/ Deathsquad - They need a War/ Faded Pictures/ Burial at Sea - Staatsfeind/ Caligula/ Phantasmagoria - Iron Force/ Armageddon (2007/ Eure Erben) SOLD OUT!

Darkness was founded on the spot on December 1st 1984 after a legendary gig at the Zeche Carl in Essen, where Destruction, Iron Angel and Tormentor, an early incarnation of Kreator, had been playing. They had everything: the name of the band, Darkness (Destroyer was an early alternative name), the concept, and the pseudonyms, namely Torturer (Lacky), Agony (Hartmut Schöner) and Skull (Andreas Becker). With Damager (Uwe Christophers) a second guitarist joined the band shortly after its formation and the four-piece recorded their first demo "The evil Curse" with the songs "Victims", "Infernal Declaration" and "Armageddon". Christophers left Darkness after recording the first demo and the remaining three-piece published their second demonstration tape christened "Titanic War". By the time of their third demo "Spawn of the dark One", not only the sound quality had improved immensly, Darkness had also found a stable line-up for the first time with Oliver Fernickel (Zeutan) on vocals, Lacky on drums, Pierre Danielscyk on guitar and Bruno on bass. In Arnd Klink, the band added another second guitarist to their line-up just in time for their fourth demo, which started the ball rolling for them. New Renaissance Records from America offered them a deal to place four songs on their compilation series. In the end, New Renaissance only used the track "Armageddon" for their "Satan's Revenge" album but Darkness now had the opportunity to send out a professional cassette to record companies. Their first album "Deathsquad", released the same year on Tales of Thrash, a subsidiary label of GAMA, became an instant Teutonic Thrash Classic. And it sold in very respectable quantities, making Darkness one of the label's commercially most successful bands. 1988 saw Darkness' second album release for GAMA, entitled "Defenders of Justice". As guitarist Pierre Danielscyk had taken over a lot of the songwriting by then and one of his favourite bands was Watchtower, the songs on "Defenders of Justice" were much longer and much more complex than on the uncompromising debut. Singer Olli also got disillusioned with the way things went with Darkness during 1988. When the band started writing songs for their third longplayer, Olli was absent. Tim Oehlke, meanwhile, had already replaced Thomas Becker on bass, and Darkness was slowly but surely falling apart. When Lacky mentioned to the record company that they are toying with the idea of changing the band's name, GAMA insisted on relasing the third album "Conclusion and Revival" under the moniker of Darkness. During the course of 2005, Andreas Preisig's Battle Crty Records re-released the three Darkness albums "Deathsquad" (including 7 bonus tracks), "Defenders of Justice" (including 8 bonus tracks) and "Conclusion and Revival" (with 9 bonus tracks) on compact disc, making the band's name familiar with new generations of Thrash Metal fans. In addition to that, an 18-track live-recording from 1987 was also published (under the title of "Bocholt Live Squad"). Surprisingly, Darkness played an unexpected re-union show at the legendary "Keep It True" festival in 2006. Although they were the best band of the night (and got offered to play three further festivals as a result), this gig was an one-off affair. Arnd and Lacky decided to concentrate fully on their work with Eure Erben, who have released two extremely enjoyable, privately produced six-track mini-CD's so far. The vinyl box-set on High Roller Records (strictly limited to 500 copies) contains rare demo-material from the early days as well as highly-energetic live-recordings, including their legendary re-union show at the 2006 "Keep It True" festival. Matthias Mader