The previously unreleased "Imminent Doom", recorded all the way back in 2009, is now available online for the first time. The song is an interesting piece of history - in many ways it shaped the band we've been ever since, and it certainly was an important part of why "Odes of the Occult" turned out like it did.
All the way back in the summer of 2007 we recorded our first full-length album, Syndicate of Lethargy. For reasons outside our control, it wasn't released until August of 2008. As we were waiting for the album to drop, we did what we used to at that time: we wrote more music. During this period, we wrote almost another album's worth of material - more or less in the same style as we'd always done.
Fast forward a year, and our label intended to do a concept compilation album: "Toteninsel", named after "Die Toteninsel" / "Isle of the Dead", a painting by Swiss artist Arnold BΓΆcklin. The idea was that all the bands would contribute one track inspired by the painting. This was an interesting opportunity to break away from our usual rut and do something different. We'd played with doomy elements on both of our previous releases, but for this track we decided to "write a doom track". And so we did.
The result was the song "Imminent Doom", our contribution to the "Toteninsel" compilation album that never came to be. It was recorded in January of 2009 in our rehearsal studio (where we also recorded "Odes of the Occult" and "Morbid Dimensions"). We mixed it ourselves, with a little guidance from Ola Christian Gundelsby (who would go on to mix the two following albums).
Having completed this project, we were so pleased with the experience and outcome that most of the material written during 2008 was scrapped. The band had a new goal; guitars dropped to B, and the work on "Odes of the Occult" ensued. The only remains of the 2008 material ended up as the two songs "Grains" and "Obsession". If you listen closely, you will find these two songs to contain certain elements that were completely eliminated from the remaining writing session and is wholly absent from the rest of the album.
So, enjoy this little piece of history: "Imminent Doom" - it shaped our album "Odes of the Occult", and it changed Execration forever.