Xantotol

Xantotol

Thus Spake Zaratustra

Nuclear War Now

***While their output was limited to just two demos and a single album, Xantotol have maintained a cult status in the quarter century since the band’s dissolution. Formed in 1991 by drummer Jacek “Venom” Szczepański and female guitarist and vocalist Mała, while they were still in high school, Xantotol were among the vanguard of Poland’s Satanic elite in the early days of the Polish black metal movement. Inspired by the likes of Venom, Bathory, Samael, Necromantia, and a host of other obscure metal the teenagers encountered through avid tape-trading, Xantotol developed a style of black metal that was at once primitive, brooding, and atmospheric. At first, Szczepański attempted to provide vocals, but it quickly became apparent to them both that Mała had the better voice. At the time, there were few, if any, black metal bands that featured female vocalists. The extreme economic conditions Poland experienced at that time due to the slow decay of the communist regime profoundly impacted the band’s sound. They relied on cheap equipment and could only rehearse a couple times per week in a room they rented at the local culture center. Despite or perhaps because of these limitations, the band’s first two demos—“Glory For Centuries” (1991) and “Cult of the Black Pentagram” (1993)—were primordial paeans to the particular strain of Nietzschean Satanism that deeply influenced Szczepański and Mała. It was around this same time that Szczepański founded the Satanic organization Fullmoon Foundation, which later evolved into the notorious Temple of Fullmoon. In 1995, Xantotol...

Xantotol

Black Doom Metal

Nuclear War Now

***BACK IN STOCK!!!  Though relatively small in terms of population and geographic size, Poland made a significant contribution to the development of Black Metal. As the genre matured throughout the 1990s, Poland delivered to the world some of the most earnest and stylistically varied Black Metal the scene has ever known. Among the earliest and most legendary of these Polish bands was Xantotol. Many other bands (particularly those in the Norwegian scene) that would later be considered Black Metal pioneers were, at that time, still playing Death Metal, but Xantotol were unquestionably blackened in their approach, both musically and conceptually. With respect to Xantotol’s sound, the most obvious comparison is to the mid-paced Black Metal dirges of Switzerland’s Samael. Like other Polish bands from that era such as Pandemonium and Taranis, Samael’s early performances in Poland had a profound influence upon the development of Xantotol’s sound, but it would be disingenuous to simply write Xantotol off as an imitation. Xantotol released its first demo, “Glory for Centuries” (which contained a cover of Samael’s “Into the Pentagram”) in 1991, the same year that Samael released their debut LP, “Worship Him.” Although Samael had been around a few more years and released several demos by that time, the bands were essentially operating contemporaneously.