DREADFUL RELIC - Archaic Conjurations LP

Recorded and released in 2014, Dreadful Relic’s “Archaic Conjurations” demo established the sonic and thematic axes about which the band has expanded and evolved over the last decade. The specter of ancient civilizations lost to time haunts their music. Cities once teeming with people, tethered to their own relative sense of modernity, reduced to ash and dust. This is the fate of all men—for all their megalomaniacal lust they are ultimately nothing, their works obliterated in the darkness cast by time’s long shadow. Nowhere is this phenomenon more readily apparent than in Dreadful Relic’s homeland of Greece, its ancient ruins and monuments like the last crackling embers and ashen remnants where the fire of western civilization once blazed brightest, harkening back to a time when the veil between reality and magic was thin, translucent, and permeable. Dreadful Relic approach these concepts metaphorically, drawing heavily upon the mythopoeic works of Robert E. Howard, references to which abound in the band’s lyrics. Like Howard’s Hyborian tales, Dreadful Relic conjure atavistic imagery—a lost epoch of mystical transcendence, honor in bloodshed, and blurred lines between good and evil, holy and depraved. Beneath Crom’s cruel gaze, ancient winds howl through the remains of desecrated temples and across battlefields where buzzards pick the flesh from the bones of fallen warriors. With the same reverence they accord Howard, Dreadful Relic also invoke Hellhammer/Celtic Frost as their primary musical antecedent, making no attempt to obscure their admiration. Indeed, the demo includes a cover of the track “Inner Sanctum” from Celtic Frost’s “Into the Pandemonium” album. But while many bands have worshipped at the altar of Celtic Frost, few have done so with the same degree of artistry and integrity. Dreadful Relic do not engage in rote mimicry. Instead, they adapt and advance the sound of the Swiss black metal progenitors, recasting it in a contemporary form that complements the ideas undergirding the project. That they shamelessly proclaim their sources of inspiration is a testament to the intentionality of their creation. With the “Archaic Conjurations” demo, Dreadful Relic laid the foundation for their subsequent releases through which they would continue to develop these concepts, and this reissue marks the first time this material has been available since its initial release nearly a decade ago.