HADES recording dates:
June 1993: Alone Walkyng (demo)
June - July 1994: ...And Again Shall Be
June - July 1996: The Dawn of the Dying Sun
HADES recorded all three classics at Grieghallen, Bergen, Norway.
Alone Walkyng was a very well received demo. The band printed a couple hundred; another 1000 were made and sold by Wounded Love Recs. HADES signed to Full Moon Productions for their two albums.
Two songs from the demo were re-recorded for ...Again Shall Be, the third ("Alone Walkyng") was re-recorded for the second album, The Dawn of the Dying Sun.
After legal issues with the New Jersey HADES, the band officially became known as HADES ALMIGHTY. They released two albums Millenium Nocturne (1999) and The Pulse of Decay (2001), then fell silent until a triumphant return with Pyre Era, Black! which was released as a split with DRUDKH.
Searching for Chaucer's Alone Walkyng...
The Dawn of a Dying Sun album sleeve notes credit the title and lyrics for "Alone Walkyng" to "Richard Chaucer in 1572". I think they're referring to Geoffrey Chaucer who served King Richard II, even though that Chaucer died in 1400.
The poem Alone Walkyng was historically attributed to Geoffrey Chaucer but that claim has been dismissed by later academics, noting the author name had been "added by later hand" (see below). The poem is usually known simply as "Ballad", "Virelai" (referring to the medieval French verse form it uses) or "Lover's Lament".
The disappointing seventh volume of Dr. Skeat's edition, containing poems once attributed to Chaucer, has little poetical merit. Some of those poems belong to a later age, and are of no interest as illustrating Chaucer - false ascriptions merely, such as the pretty piece:
Alone walking, In thought playing,
And sore sighing, All desolate,
Me remembring, Of my living,
My deth wishing Bothe erly and late.which for reasons both of philology and sentiment must be placed much later.
Adolphus Alfred Jack (University of Aberdeen), 1920
The original source of this poem, and therefore HADES lyrics, is very likely from a late 15th-early 16th Century collection. The relevant page is below (right page, left column).
Note the author attribution in the left margin and the Middle English that closer matches the song lyrics (remembryng, lyvyng, etc.)
The complete book can be viewed at Trinity College, Cambridge. From the collection of John Stow (1524-1605).
The song "Alone Walkyng" goes back further than the demo, further even than HADES itself.
After AMPUTATION and the first IMMORTAL demo, Jørn joined OLD FUNERAL briefly, replacing Vikernes on guitar, and recorded an early version of "Alone..." in September 1992 at Kardemommehuset. This session was never released (the band split around the same time) but you can find the four songs on The Older Ones and Our Condolences compilations.