This long-lost platter of vicious, punk-infested Tokyo black-thrash from Abigail surfaced at just the right moment for yours truly; I've been cranking every Abigail record I own to the hilt lately, in feverish anticipation of their upcoming foray into the States for Maryland Death Fest, and the Confound Eternal 7" has been on repeat on my turntable ever since the records came in. This is one of the oldest releases from Abigail, a two-song 7" that was released back in 1996 on the short-lived Vancouver label Of God's Disgrace Productions, whose only other release that I know of was the Funerary Call Pronounced Unholy 7". Issued in a limited edition of five hundred copies, this has been a tough record to come by for fans of these Venom-worshipping Japanese black metal punks, and both of the tracks were later included on the The Lord Of Satan Cd / Lp collection that came out on Nuclear War Now; if you've got that release in your collection, then you already have this stuff. On their own, though, these two songs pack a killer wallop; a-side track "Mephistopheles" is ridiculously catchy, starting off with chiming clean guitars and a big melodic hook for the intro before kicking into some driving, sinister Frostian riffage and gargling unintelligible shrieks. A primo example of Abigail's punk-infected blackened metal, shifting between the buzzsaw thrash and that hooky melodic chorus, waiting till the very end to hurtle into their blastbeat-riddled chaos. On the other hand, "Confound Eternal" erupts almost immediately into ferocious blackened thrash on the flipside, blasting aggression and droning blackswarm riffing giving way to galloping breakneck thrash, Yasuyuki spitting blood in every direction. A real ripper. We picked up the last-ever copies of this 7", and quantities are limited...