February 09, 2017

Those were the days: looking back on our 1997 shows with Barathrum and Sabbat

Since we are exactly two weeks away from doing a short tour with Barathrum, almost exactly twenty years after we first toured with them, we figured this would be a good time to look back on these legendary shows.

The following is a slightly edited and expanded version of a report Orlok wrote for Morbid Tales #6 back in 2007. All right, here we go: a trip down memory lane . . .

"In early 1997, the line-up that had been together for two years by then, admittedly with a few interruptions, was on the brink of breaking up (what a surprise – we may have split up more often than we played 'Countess Bathory'). Then all of a sudden we got two offers for gigs, one in Bussum and one in Wassenaar and we thought; whatever, let’s continue. Those gigs turned out pretty cool and got us enthusiastic about the band again. We decided to record three new songs for a mini CD and when around that time Opyros informed me that he was putting together a tour for us, Barathrum and Sabbat from Japan, we were pretty excited. It would be a privilege to play with the legend that Sabbat is and ever since Demonos and I first met in January 1995 (when I was recording 'Ad Maiorem') we had wanted to tour together.