���� Long before they became the titans of progressive, mystical black thrash that would produce the 2001 masterpiece Tara, Texan band Absu began life as a ripping death metal monstrosity in the very early 90s, debuting with the four-song Return of the Ancients demo. Now reissued on both CD and vinyl and bundled with the band's 1992 EP The Temples Of Offal, that demo showcases the earliest rotten writhings of this esteemed outfit, offering an early, pre-Proscriptor version of their sound that stands in stark contrast to the proggy "mythological occult metal" of their more recent work.

���� The three-song Temples Of Offal 7" (originally released on Gothic Records in 1992) makes up the first half of this collection, blasting out the band's early, monstrous death metal sound with some intensely violent excursions into grindcore territory (that includes some awesome bestial vocals that completely dispense with any attempt at coherence) and stretches of punishing dark doom that crawl out of the band's warped blastscapes like one of the protean humanoid horrors depicted on the sleeve art. There are only the merest hints of the esoteric mythological influences that later become more prominent in Absu's music; for the most part this early work is entrenched in visions of rot and charnel violence.

���� The band's debut demo Return Of The Ancients from 1991 is even more primitive, four songs of violent buzzsaw death metal shot through with a few moments of crawling, doom-laden heaviness and a couple outbursts of weird riffing that cuts through the demo's low-fi, murk-encrusted sound; that is, save for the spacey, almost kosmische ambience of "Sea Of Glasya" which drifts out of the middle of the demo in a wash of ominous, mesmeric celestial murk, hinting at the group's interest in atmospheric texture that they'd really begin to develop further on the debut album Barathrum: V.I.T.R.I.O.L.. The side is rounded out with a rehearsal recording of "Abhorred Xul [Azagthoth]", recorded when the band still went under the name Azathoth, and previously only available on the now out-of-print Barathrum boxset. It's raw stuff, of course, but still hideously powerful.

���� Includes an insert with lyrics, release info, vintage ads from the era, and reproductions of the original demo sleeve.