New purchase: Paramæcium - Within the Ancient Forest

I remember when I was a sort-of-outsider kid, totally into the harder forms of electronic dance music. I just started the second part of high school (at the school I went to, the last three years were on another location), I got some friends that listened to metal. Soon, I came in contact with a lot of bands from various styles -- Vomitory, Arch Enemy, Nightwish, Slipknot, Darkthrone are those I remember clearly. Just after that, I went exploring on the web (broadband was a new thing back then). Soon, I found this style called 'doom metal', of which somehow I hadn't heard anything. And there it was - Paramaecium, with the album Exhumed of the Earth (though admittedly, there was also My Dying Bride). Seeing as this was the age of limewire, I had but a few tracks of this album. But amazing as it was.

Now, roughly six or seven years later, I stroll through a local music store and I see this cover. I couldn't read the logo on the front - I believed I found some black metal by a band called 'Within the Ancient Forest'. Only when I got home I realized- Paramaecium! And what a feast of doom, nostalgia and joy it is. Who ever said Christians can't make good music?

Pagan Altar - Volume 1

Hello (again), folks.

I sweeped away whatever was here before (half a dozen links to last.fm streams and downloads), decided to start over. I intend to write a little more interesting now. Here's the idea:
I do what most blogs do, ie. pointing you where to download something. However, what annoys me about most of those is that very few of them actually provide anything about the band. I intend to do this different. Please note, I will never provide direct download links (call me a selfish bastard, but at least you people will see how exact google queries can be).

My first post is about the band Pagan Altar, a band founded in the late 70's from England. They're one of the bands that moved from NWOBHM to doom metal. They self-released most of their early works, but their first album got re-released in 1998, with the title 'Volume 1':

This is the album I discovered today through last.fm's Unknown Metal group (the group labels any band with under 5000 listeners on last.fm as 'unknown', just to have some kind of measure). The album has music somewhere around Black Sabbath and Candlemass. I actually prefer this album over Candlemass' Epicus Doomicus Metallicus, though both have the same downside of boring vocals. However, this album features more elements of heavy metal, which definitely makes this one better. And it has the short-but-awesome track 'Acoustics'. If you like the previously mentioned artists, you should definitely check out. You can find a download link right here (first link works at the time of writing).

More information:
Official Site
Unknown Metal post
RateYourMusic
last.fm
Encyclopaedia Metallum

Thanks to:
ApZwanenberg: last.fm user who posted this in the Unknown Metal forums.
Unknown Metal: for being the platform that helps me find good metal.