Review by Ludo for Death SS - The Story of Death SS 1977-1984 (1987)

This is not a standard album... this a proof, a testimony of what these guys from central Italy were able to conceive in a period and in a country which simply were not the right time and place to be for making Metal, performing shoking horror shows, and talking about Satanism, Black Masses, and Occult.
From that early band formation emerged 2 prominent figures, crucial for the Italian Heavy Metal scene of following years: Paul Chain and Steve Sylvester. And the band in general is regarded as one of the first acts in Europe to pave the way for what will then become Black Metal (at least as concerns topics covered, lyrics, face painting, horror shows, blasphemy etc.)
The album is rather poorly recorded, it contains the band's first material, mainly taken from demotapes and live shows (some of these songs became legendary and were the most awaited in Death SS concerts in following decades) but this gives the whole work (which I own on vinyl) an aura of early roughness, fear and myth that still today gives me shivers...