Did you ever hear about the band known as Imago Daemonis? Probably not, underground metal bands never really get noticed as much. Imago Daemonis, Demon’s Image in English, was a six man blackened death metal band based in Germany during the late 90s. Notice how I said was, but we’ll get to their splitting later. The band consisted of two guitarists, two singers, a bassist and a drummer, all of them anonymous, though viewers have given nicknames to the singers, “Genius” (Demon in his case) and “Incubus”, the guitarists were named “Letum” (Carnage) and “Mors” (Death), the bassist was called “Morbus” (Disease) and the drummer had the name “Opes” (Wealth). During very small gigs, they only wore blank face masks along with cloaks, according to fans of the band.

The band was going through a time when censorship was pretty hard. They avoided censorship by refusing to sign up to a record label and was said to record the music themselves to distribute. One of the few way people obtained their music was through random jewel cases of other albums, with the original CD being replaced with ID’s only album. Their only sign of existence was that album, and a man close to them. It was a nameless album; the CDs had no pictures, just a blank disc. The album only had four tracks, each one being over ten minutes long, according to previous owners of the album. Each song sounded like it was recorded in a small trashcan, and it had chanting in German and Latin. Due to the guttural vocals of death metal and black metal being mixed throughout most of the songs, deciphering the lyrics were a challenge to listeners. Most of the lyrics in the songs were said to be satanic, words being screamed out repeatedly were Satanas and Diabolus (words for Satan/Devil in Latin), while Genius constantly growled Teufel (word for Demon in German).

Most of the information above was mainly from a person close to the band, named Johann (last name won’t be given on his request), a childhood friend of Morbus and Letum. Johann, a former theistic Satanist, now a proud follower of Catholicism, was the first one to hear about the band. After meeting up with Genius and Incubus through Morbus, he became a spokesperson for the band, and somewhat of a preacher. Johann had the information of the names of the member, but refused to give me the information. He also had the name of the tracks of the unnamed album, which was dubbed “Incarnati” (Incarnation) by the band. The tracks names (all in German) in order were, Gottes Blut (God’s Blood), Vier Reiter (Four Horsemen), die Rache (the Revenge) and Jüngster Tag (Judgment Day).  I asked for a copy of the album, to which, he said that any remaining copies he had were destroyed by request of the band before it disbanded. He also told me that it would be a mistake to give me a copy, telling me blatantly that it might summon the dark lord. Later on during my interview with him, I insisted him to show me one of the recordings, and so he did.

When he popped a VHS tape labeled Vier into the VCR, what popped up was a gray, but brightly lit room.  Johann explained it, it was in an abandoned warehouse in Norway. Six men were in a group, surrouneded by mirrors, all of them in white blank masks. Two of them had microphones, which I assumed was Incubus and Genius. What bothered me was that they didn’t have any holes in their masks... while everyone else did. The video was muted, no sound emanated from the TV. Johann told me that he muted the video so that no demon would be summoned. Shrugging off his explanation as BS, I observed the video. I saw shadows around the brightly lit room, like other people were there. Along with this, dark and blurred figures, standing right where the band members were and areas behind the camera were seen in the reflections. Curious, I asked Johann what was this, and he told me that only him and the band was in the room, no one else. What also disturbed me was within the old, grainy video was that the vocalists masks were... moving. The vocalists' mouths were moving, not their actual mouths, the masks' mouths were moving and blinking during the performance. When I asked Johann about this, he was silent, and after many attempts, he finally spoke out. Johann said that the vocalists weren’t human, the band knew this, and Johann knew this. Johann said that they soon became criminals of sorts, sacrificing people in the name of their lord. Johann soon told me that when someone close to Morbus was about to get sacrificed, Morbus heard about it and murdered both Genius and Incubus. A rift grew between Morbus and the remaining band members. Two months after the murders, Morbus was found dead in a church, and autopsies reported that he died of a heart attack. Opes, Mors and Letum soon gave up on music, and all three of them converted to Catholicism, forgetting everything about the incidents. The band officially disbanded during June of 1999, and before converting, the three remaining members convinced Johann to destroy any remaining discs that he still had of Incarnati, along with requesting people that Johann had distributed discs to destroy them as well.

Only a few people still had copies of Incarnati, as Johann had instructed some of his friends, which was 85% of people who listened to the band, to destroy their copies. I haven’t been able to track down anyone who owns the disc, but it still makes me wonder, for what reason did the remaining remembers of ID ordered the discs to be destroyed, and what was in their lyrics that summoned demons.
[[Category:Music]]
[[Category:Demon/Devil]]