Norway already gave birth to a whole lot of first class Black Metal acts throughout the years and as childish as it may sound – to me they still rule over every other country in terms of delivering the right grim and cold atmosphere! Apart from all the bigger names (which mostly lost this particular feeling on their way to mainstream acceptance), there’s still serveral ("cult") band’s around that gained themselves a die hard following, due to their uncompromising and honest attitude. Bergen’s TAAKE certainly is one of them! These guys originally started out as THULE, but after two demos they changed their name into TAAKE and released two excellent albums on Italy’s Avantgarde Records ever since. This nicely packed digipak release here is not a new full length, but a compilation of all their pre-album recordings – 10 tracks in total… So, what you get is both THULE demos from 1993 ("Der Vinterstormene – Raste") and 1994 respectively ("Omfavnet Av Svarte Vinger"), TAAKE’s rehearsal debut demo from 1995 ("Manndaudsvinter") and their 3 track 7" EP "Koldbrann I Jesu Marg", which originally got released on Høst’s own small label Mosegrodd Productions in 1996 and lead to their deal with Avantgarde Music. Of course the sound quality is pretty raw (you gotta remember that this material was not meant to be released in this format when it originally was recorded), but as so often with Black Metal acts, this doesn’t really matter too much… it actually increases the sinister atmosphere even more! So, all in all this is a very cool historical document for all those of you who still worship their daily dose of Black Metal as basic and raw as possible! All further info you may get from www.pervertedtaste.de or http://taake.cjb.net