For many a male youth born after 1970, ingesting Black Sabbath for the first time is a rite of passage. To miss out on the band’s occult imagery and brutal, primitive riffs at an influential age—let’s say anywhere between 10 and 17—would be a detriment to one’s musical development. Once one discovers the glory of Iommi and Ozzy, the want to spiral into the void towards the deepest, crustiest, downer hard rock becomes addictive. Deep Purple, Dust, Pentagram, Sir Lord Baltimore, and on and on—the heaviness is neverending. Leave it to the Numero Group to uncover yet another layer among these dark lords and dirt-weed heroes for its Darkscorch Canticles collection. Here, a sediment that never quite rose to the surface is revealed and expanded upon (each band now has updated, school desk engraving–worthy logos and extensive notes about them), culled from forgotten 45s going coast to coast from as early as 1972 and onwards to 1980. Last year’s reissue of Chicago’s Medusa debut was certainly the catalyst to find more groups that drank from the same well, and through an extensive search, it appears there were plenty of basement-dwelling Sabbath worshipers to excavate from oblivion.

The criteria for Darkscorch Canticles is somewhat loose, but to call it merely proto-metal is lazy. First and foremost, the era here is post-Zeppelin and post-Sabbath, so it’s apparent many of these bands were steeped in deep electrified blues and had worn through copies of Paranoid in the midst of starting to conjure their own heavy demons. The black arts are a prerequisite, be it Crowley, Lovecraft, marathon Dungeons and Dragons sessions, or just a shocking shout-out to Satan. From Triton Warriors’ “Sealed in a Grave” to the wickedly sinister solos in Stone Axe’s “Slave of Fear,” the goal was to out-freak the current metal freaks.  If anything, these documents reveal the bedrock of an endless cycle of metal one-upmanship that has evolved to include landmarks like speed metal and death metal and onward towards whatever extremities are being sown these days. It’s hard not to chuckle at some of these attempts; Wizard’s cheeky “Seance” seems a bit too serious to be anything but Nuggets-meets–Spinal Tap hilarity and Air’s leading “Twelve O’Clock Satanial” is the farthest thing from intimidating in lyric and tone.

That said, there’s a lot here to devour, and it’s easy to envision a Darkscorch expansion where some of these bands get the full album treatment someday soon. A distinctive quality to most of these tracks is dexterity and a penchant for the emerging prog-rock of bands like King Crimson and Rush. Canton’s Wrath, who offer up their only single, “Warlord,” goes for fantasy and precision over doom and gloom. In a strange turn of events, the lead vocals are provided by the singer’s wife, giving “Warlord” an ethereal atmosphere that wouldn’t have been present with mere Ozzy-mocks. Elsewhere Dark Star’s amateur and fuzzy “Spectre,” makes up for any lack of originality with a raw punk that is proto-something, just not sure what. Overall, that’s the feeling that comes with Darkscorch Canticles. These were all bands of hopeful working-class stoners, simply living out their arena dreams with small-batch records, bad drugs, and supporting gigs when Black Oak Arkansas came to town. Few made it out of the studio, but now they are forever part of that metal education and the search for shock and awe using medieval imagery and drop D riffs.