Thousand Swords - History - First Albums and Racist Tirades

First Albums and Racist Tirades

A few months later, the band's first album, Carpathian Wolves (recorded at the Radio PRO-FM Studio, Opole, Apr 26-May 2, 1994), was released by Eternal Devils Records. With Carpathian Wolves, the band drew the attention of several bigger metal labels and was eventually signed by the Austrian Lethal Records label, which released Thousand Swords. This album was recorded in December 1994 at Tuba Studio, Wrocław, "in the days of eternal winter & frozen night of full moon, at the gates of a new era". The Lethal Records release showed a progression in Graveland's sound from raw black metal to black metal with folk and Viking metal influence to it. The album is considered to be the band's best release by many fans and a classic in the black metal scene. After reportedly making several racist statements, the band were dropped by Lethal. Darken then founded his own label, Isengard (later Eastclan), and re-released an extended Thousand Swords on cassette. The album's booklet contains statements against Lethal Records and two other bigger metal labels, Osmose and Nuclear Blast. All three are dismissed as part of a "Jewish business conspiracy". In 1999, the album was re-released, again, by No Colours with another different album cover. In 2001, it was re-released for a second time by No Colours on CD and vinyl. The CD version had the logo in red and the vinyl version had a red logo. The CD and vinyl versions had different covers from each other.