Originally released on cassette in 2004 in a limited edition of 100 copies, Badb is one of the earliest releases from the Saskatchewan-based black metal/noise duo WOLD. The nine tracks featured here revolve around the mythology of the war goddess, the spectre of doom that lurks at the edge of the battlefield, and begins at the heart of a roiling black blizzard and proceeds through a charred nightmare soundscape of icy corroded black metal riffs, fractured blasting, melancholic melodies blurred and smeared into malevolent new shapes, and scathing distorted witch-screams ripping through the blackness, all doused and drowned in Merzbowian levels of feedback and distortion abuse. Now presented on CD for the first time, this early swarm of WOLD's psychotropic black metal/noise terror comes with all-new artwork from Pippi Zornoza.
Review
...an almost unholy fusion of black metal aestheticism and blurred wipeout noise that heralded the coming of a severe new voice in the black metal underground. "Badb" is nothing short of amazing, as essential now as it was originally, the ideas explored within having been co-opted by a dearth of lesser practitioners and calibrated into something nowhere near as potent as the distillation Wold themselves achieved. This demo laid the groundwork for "Stratification" and easily ranks as the band's second-finest work; its fury and passion simply obliterate the good majority of modern black metal by way of sheer force and tenacity of vision. - Emotionally Voided 5/5
