Night Conquers Day - the Demo, Live & Rehearsals

After Buried Beneath split up, there were 3 of us. Me, Tim and Greg Herman. The 3 of us formed Night Conquers Day in August 1995. I came up with the band name and drew the original logo, and the logo you see above was drawn by Kris Verwimp based on my original sketch. I think it's a phenomenal logo. Since there were NO drummers in Rochester interested in playing the style we had in mind, I decided to play the drums at rehearsals. I was still writing music, teaching it to Greg, and he'd then play guitar while I came up with drum parts. Tim played bass, but also wrote guitar riffs and wrote in his own style. He always had one or 2 songs he focused everything into.
The demo was recorded on a 4-track and the line-up on it is:

Mikael - Drums, Guitars, Keyboards, Vocals

Tim - Bass

Greg Herman - Guitar

It was recorded all in one day, Friday the 13th October 1995, so we called it that. It's just 2 songs, but 2 very long songs. This would define our epic style. It was starting to show in Buried Beneath - you'll notice the songs were starting to get longer by the end. The 2 songs on the demo were rehearsed by Buried Beneath when we had Shane as a drummer. Shane kept fucking up both songs and we never completely rehearsed them, nor had I shown everyone the ending for "What Was And Never Shall Be Again". The other song, "In Fields Of Green I Wander..." was never included on any albums. Instead a re-recorded version of it appears on the Buried Beneath CD.
Friday the 13th October 1995 Demo
1. What Was And Never Shall Be Again (14:24)
2. In Fields Of Green I Wander...  (10:34)
DOWNLOAD HERE

Here is the very first Bio sheet for Night Conquers Day which features a logo drawn by Greg Herman based on my original logo.

In February of 1998 we opened a local show for Norwegian black metallers Ancient. In fact while they were in Rochester the band stayed at my house for several days. It was a great time hanging with Aphazel and Lord Kaiaphas and the rest of the band. We jammed Mercyful Fate covers in our rehearsal room. We played the show together and we recorded our set live through the soundboard and it sounds really good. So here is that concert and it includes our cover-version of Bathory's "Equimanthorn". We were the first Rochester band to have somewhat of a "stage show". Minimal, but still something more to look at than just some guys on stage. I was the only one decked out in spikes, nails, facepaint and such. I had all my leather spike and nail gear custom made for me locally. We had 3 candelabras with lit black candles onstage. We also had an altar with animal bones and a human skull plus a cow vertebrae mounted to the mic stand I screamed into. The line-up for the live show is:

Mikael - Vocals, Guitar

Tim - Bass

Gregg Garbach - Drums

Justin Carder - Guitar

John Gallo - session live keyboards

Live February 19, 1998 @the Penny Arcade in Rochester, NY (Soundboard)
1. The Storm Before The Calm
2. Banished From My Eyes
3. Drawn Together In Magnetic Violet Trances
4. The First Snowfall
5. Equimanthorn (Bathory-cover)
DOWNLOAD HERE

Here is a flyer for the show and also the layout for the cassette that I'd send to people for a blank tape and $1.00 if they wanted the live show dubbed.

  And here are live pics from the Ancient gig and a few others, all taken by Evil Eye......

I also found a couple of rehearsals.

The line-up on both rehearsals is:
Mikael - Vocals, Guitar

Tim - Bass

Justin Carder - Guitar

Gregg Garbach - Drums

First up is a very early rehearsal after Gregg (drums) and Justin (guitar) had joined the band in 1997. Prior to those 2 joining it was just Me and Tim. We did have a rhythm guitarist (Greg Herman) playing with us on the demo, but he vanished during the recordings for the debut CD in 1996. We found Gregg and Justin through the radio show I DJ'ed. They called in and had a project band of their own called Shadowlord, and I was impressed with it. Plus it turned out that Gregg, although really a guitarist, was also a good drummer. So this is an early rehearsal as a 4 piece working on songs for a live set. It's a short rehearsal and the sound quality isn't the greatest.
Rehearsal 7-31-1997 Lammas Eve
1. The First Snowfall
2. Banished From My Eyes
3. (weird guitar noises)
DOWNLOAD HERE

This second rehearsal is special. It's our last rehearsal as a band as Tim quit the following month the night before we were opening for Mayhem. It also contains some new songs that WOULD have appeared on our 3rd CD had we not split up. There are no vocals on the 3 new songs because I had not yet worked out how the vocals would go. At this point they were new songs and the band was learning the music first. Our 3rd album was going to be a conceptually themed album called "Evil From Us Deliver But" that dissected the roots of christianity. I had all the lyrics written, but they're lost in some notebook in a box someplace. Too bad we weren't at the point to record the songs with vocals - they would sound much better. The only song with vocals is "Rebellion...." since it's an older song obviously from the 2nd CD. The music for the first 2 songs will be showing up on a future Tearstained release as I wrote them. The song "Martyrdom Delusions" (the music) was penned by Tim and then me and Justin came up with all the harmonies and themes that went over the main riffs. It's a great song but I didn't write it. It's a "Tim song". It's a classic!!!!
Last Rehearsal 10-17-1999
1. A Nietzschean Hymn
2. Agnostic Antichrist
3. Rebellion Is The Art Of Survival
4. Martyrdom Delusions
DOWNLOAD HERE

Mikael playing drums at rehearsal 1995

Greg Herman, rhythm guitar, 1995-1996 

John Gallo of Orodruin, session live keyboards 1998

Night Conquers Day - Live 1998

Backstage behind the Penny Arcade after a concert

Tim & Mikael live onstage 1998

Gregg Garbach, drums, live 1998

Justin Carder, guitar, live 1998

All photos by Ron "Evil Eye" Pappert. Thanks goes out to Evil Eye for his support through everything. He took all band photos and videos of every band I played in. His photography graces every CD and demo booklet I ever released.