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Incubus Succubus are not a band that many people will have heard of, which is a shame, particularly if you are passionate about rock music and are looking for something with depth and originality. The band evolved from humble beginnings from a group of friends who met in that most fertile of band producing establishments, Art College. Sharing an interest in music and paganism the band mixed elements of rock and gothic music and pagan ideas and imagery and began the long slog to become, as they have been regarded for a long time now, "Britain's Premier Pagan Rock Band". This album is a best of the early work and came out in 1994 before several later line up changes which saw the replacement of a live drummer for a machine and the increased use of sequencers and samplers to create even more glorious creations.

But if there is such a category as Pagan Rock, what would that be all about. Unfortunately the term pagan has been hijacked in the media. With shows such as Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Charmed and the like spinning episodes that overtly use the ideology, people seem to have a warped idea of what paganism actually is. Similarly, musically the term pagan has been hijacked by a horde of black clad, gloomy, college fashion victims and every "misunderstood" patchouli smelling depressive seems to have decided that this is some sort of alternative fashion that makes them more interesting, enigmatic and mysterious. I know of which I speak, as a younger man I was once a bit of a Goth on the side but was thrown out for laughing. Without dwelling on what paganism means in spiritual terms, suffice it to say here its message is one of a celebration of the natural order of things, seasonal celebrations as well as the more ritualistic ideas that lie closer to the bone as well as an understanding of the history of the path itself and the injustices that have been done to it.

The track from which the album takes its name leads us into the affair in a riot of drums and a dark metal guitar riffs. The rhythm guitars are a distorted wall of sound, the leads are razor sharp and the drums dominated here more than they should, but at no point do the band loses site of the art of melody. Something to often sacrificed for power and impact. Once the song settles into its pace a glorious voice fills the space left as the instrumentalists back down. Candia has a unique vocal capacity, a wide range that often delivers the lower end of the register, remains feminine but has a dark and bass

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