Occult

Forming in 1992, the Dutch outfit Occult fused thrash metal with black metal leanings and issued its debut album, Prepare to Meet Thy Doom, in 1994, by which point the roster had stabilized around vocalist Maurice "Sephiroth" Swinkels, guitarist Richard Ebisch, bassist Twan Fleuren, and drummer Erik Fleuren. That same quartet remained unchanged eleven years on, yet the group’s four releases—The Enemy Within (1996), Of Flesh & Blood (1999), Rage to Revenge (2002), and Elegy for the Weak (2003)—while consistently competent, never achieved widespread success beyond the extreme metal underground, leading the band to adopt the name Legion of the Damned and pursue a more death-inflected strain of thrash metal from that point forward.