Cirith Ungol - Servants of Chaos (2001)

Servants of Chaos makes for an interesting fan package in that it offers an extensive exposure to what the band was up to in that entire decade before they dropped their debut record. Largely comprised of their 1978 and 79 demos, each album-length in of itself, with some live tunes tacked on, it's about as comprehensive a backlog as one might ask for and really rounds out the collection of any completist. Naturally the presumption is that this material is going to embrace the 70s hard rock aesthetics even more than their first few official studio efforts, and I think that holds true, but even then I wasn't prepared for just how wild and adventurous the band was going to be. This shit is raw, it's often all over the place, but you can generally hear how they formulated the heavier hitting sound they would progress with.

"Hype Performance", the opener slaps you with some very Hawkwind-sounding spacey hard prog rock, with weird sounds and keys glitching through the guitars, where some of the other tunes like "Last Laugh" have more of the vibe you'd expect from their era, bluesy hard rock with some talky vocals that almost remind me of punk and garage, or even later grunge stuff like Mudhoney. There are a number of the recognizable tracks like "Frost and Fire", but they sound even quirkier with the acid synthesizers, or "Better Off Dead" which sounds like you're jamming it through even more of a marijuana haze coming from the back of some airbrushed van. Even "1000 M.P.H." makes an appearance, sounding a little more suited to this mesh of material than on One Foot in Hell where it ended up. Tim's voice is already in that grating, warlike mode on many of these earlier tunes, and to be fair, the demo-level production has a good raw charm to it that makes the band sound absolutely savage, despite the nerdy prog cheese that they are often escaping towards.

Some highlights for me were the instrumental duo of "Ill Met in Lankhmar" and "Return to Lankhmar", based on the Fritz Leiber classic fantasy stories, they really manage to capture the vibe of those old anthologies with the prog rhythms, synthesizers and blazing leads, making me which they'd have these all re-recorded on some possible concept album in the Lankhmar setting. In fact a lot of the stuff from that '79 demo is instrumental, and while it does feel weird not to have Baker's voice present, they experiment with some weird sounds in "Witchdance" and "Feeding the Ants" too. To that extent, much of the material does feel unfinished or not properly organized, it's clearly not the full band spread we'd expect since there are also a lot of drums missing, but it's definitely imaginative. 

The live recordings are from the 80s and kick some ass, raw and ripping and Baker himself sounds phenomenal, potentially even more menacing than he does in-studio. The cover of "Secret Agent Man" was unexpected and doesn't feel as if it belongs, but they definitely create a dirtier and amusing version of that song which feels like it's filtered through acid trips in some abandoned garage. There are also some rehearsal recordings which sound alright, again the rawness seems to work with the vocal style and certainly makes the rhythm guitar sound more crushing. All told, there's a lot going on with this compilation, they include some extensive notes on their earlier years, and while I can't say I'd make a recommendation for new fans, or that it's got a high ratio of quality to the quantity, old heads who already love Cirith Ungol band might find it an entertaining, flawed retrospective.

Verdict: Indifference [6.5/10]

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