Another killer reissue from the Crypt, a new 2017 vinyl release of Timeghoul's ferocious 1992 and 1994 demos, presented in gatefold packaging that includes the liner notes from band member Mike Stevens and artist Mark Riddick, lyrics, Riddick's original cover art, and other imagery and art (ad copy, band pics, flyer art) from the demos that was featured in the band's discography CD on Dark Descent. Here's our take on it, taken from the older review for the more expansive double CD edition:

Ascend to Mimas! Just got this underground avant-death classic back in stock, a must-hear collection of primo weirdo death metal from the early 90s. These Missouri void-crawlers only released two demos between 1992 and 1994 before hanging it up, but despite their brief run, Timeghoul's recordings captured one of the strangest sounds to creep out of the American death metal underground. Their subject matter and imagery all had an arcane science fiction bent, while the music itself was an atypical blend of technical, prog-tinged death metal and moments of weirdly mournful doom, with an extremely odd (but amazing) vocal style that still sounds fairly unique. Over the years, Timeghoul's music has found a larger audience through the internet, hailed by fans of confusional, adventurous old-school heaviness, and the band's original demo were collected into a single disc by Dark Descent back in 2012 that featured killer new artwork from Mark Riddick; that was followed by this superior, expanded double CD set that pretty much gives you everything the band ever recorded, including rare live recordings.

Their demented approach to death metal is pretty apparent as soon as their first demo Tumultuous Travelings gets going. Those earliest recordings featured the band's murky, murderous heaviness laced with bits of sonic strangeness and rhythmic complexity, producing chugging, discordant blasts that get progressively stranger in construction. Especially once the vocals come in on "Rain Wound"; while most of the vocals are a hideous guttural gurgle, here they suddenly morph into a bizarre, almost chantlike moan as the guitars spiral out into atonal shredding madness. Those weirdly crooning vocals are used sparingly, creating a chilling, hallucinatory feel on other songs like "The Siege" where they're combined with crawling, doom-laden heaviness. And Timeghoul's sound mutated even further with the two-song Panaramic Twilight demo, consisting of two ten-minute tracks that showcase an even more intricate and frenzied direction, filled with twisted, counter-intuitive stop/start arrangements and sudden shifts into fucked-up dissonant sludge that come out of nowhere. And some surprisingly catchy hooks come out of the blasting chaos and insane, insectile riffery, with a couple of songs demonstrating an obtuse, almost prog-informed style that actually reminds me of Watchtower a bit. Those two tracks were the pinnacle of Timeghoul's output, expansive prog-death sagas that blend more of those weirdly harmonized vocals and gut-rupturing growls with increasingly ambitious songwriting. Choppy off-kilter heaviness is spiked with deranged leads and atonal melodies, flecked with bits of grim industrial drift and nauseating vocalizations, bursts of mathy mayhem and sickening synthetic ambience getting all tangled with weird spoken word readings that invoke desolate, interstellar imagery, and sprawls of majestic doom.

Of course, I can only fantasize about what a actual Timeghoul album would have sounded like, but even in demo form, this blast of cosmic vomit kills. A lost gem of atmospheric, technical weirdness on par with contemporaries Demilich and Atrocity, and an obvious predecessor to more current purveyors of sci-fi obsessed death metallers like Artificial Brain and Gigan, Timeghoul remain as bizarre and brutal as ever.