Vim Fuego The great thing about youthful enthusiasm and fledgling genres is the unrestrained inventiveness and lack of rules. No one had told Impaled Nazarene that black metal vocals had to be hissed or screeched. The bass player was actually allowed to turn up his amp, and these guys sound like they enjoyed what they were doing.

True, ‘Tol Cormpt Norz Norz Norz’ is kind of hard to understand at first, but then remember first listening to Napalm Death’s ‘From Enslavement To Obliteration’ or Repulsion’s ‘Horrified’. It’s fast and tangled, and the chaos takes a while to assume any sort of order, but it grows on you.

While much black metal of the time covered musical shortcomings with bargain basement production, the sound here is pretty clear, for this style of music. The guitar work is nothing short of phenomenal, and only the very best of the genre, like Mayhem and Emperor could match it.

The goat obsession adds a touch of humour to proceedings. Sure, the goat references are names of Satan, and meant seriously, but try listening to the sound effects and cut-ups used without laughing. It detracts a bit from the music, but it fills the album out and provides a buffer between tracks. And anyway, trying to sort one track from another is pointless- this needs to be experienced as a whole, not as individual tracks. That said, the perverse and insane “Goat Perversion” stands on it’s own.

Mika Luttinen’s vocals are insane, and anyone who has ever seen the band live will understand the insanity. Veins bulge on his shaven head. Sweat drips from his brow. His eyes are blank, focused on something the rest of us can’t see, like the man is in need of an exorcism. That exact feel is almost perfectly transferred in the studio.

There are more sensible and easier to understand albums out there, but few black metal releases have ever been so much fun. It’s enough to make a true black metaller drop his plastic sword with surprise.