The first release (in 1990) from Deathlike Silence Productions, the Norwegian record label founded by Euronymous, a black metal prophet from the band Mayhem who in 1993 was violently murdered by another musician. With The Awakening, Merciless – actually a Swedish band – fuse raging elements of speed, death and the occult to forge a concise, 28-minute masterwork of evil metal and black entropy, a key recording from the Scandinavian underground made at a time when extreme Swedish metal was in the final stage of its metamophosis into a direct counterpart to the American death scene.