Aleister Crowley: The Evil Beast (Glow In The Dark Vinyl)

The Evil Beast is not an album in the usual sense. It is a collection of Aleister Crowley’s wax cylinder recordings, issued on vinyl by Cleopatra Records and later reissued in formats including this limited glow in the dark vinyl edition. Cleopatra describes it as a set of spoken recordings featuring black magic rituals, invocations, and spoken-word pieces, while Bandcamp specifically frames the glow version as a limited edition variant of the same material.

As a review, this is much more of an occult artefact than a conventional listening experience. You do not put on The Evil Beast looking for songs, flow, or replay value in the normal vinyl sense. What gives it power is atmosphere. These recordings feel eerie because they are old, fragile, and deeply strange, not because somebody modernised them into a horror soundtrack. The real appeal is that they sound like voices reaching out of another century carrying ritual, ego, mysticism, and a kind of theatrical menace that still unsettles.

That is what makes the release compelling. Crowley’s reputation is so oversized that it is easy to forget how weirdly intimate hearing the actual recordings can be. On paper, a spoken-word LP of ritual invocations and poems could sound dry. In practice, it feels closer to a séance document or private ceremonial archive. The age of the recordings adds a lot. The cracks, limitations, and ghostly presence are part of the point. Clean fidelity would almost ruin it.

This is also why the glow in the dark pressing makes sense. Normally that kind of gimmick can feel tacky, but here it fits the object. The Evil Beast is already aimed at collectors of the odd, the occult, and the ritualistic. Rue Morgue’s own listing describes it as containing “creepy intonations of black magic rituals” and notes the chipboard, silk-screened, sequentially numbered jackets, which gives it more of an artefact quality than a standard reissue.

The limitation is obvious. This is niche. Very niche. If you are not interested in occult history, spoken-word oddities, or archival strangeness, it is probably going to feel more curious than enjoyable. But for the right listener, that is exactly the draw. It is weird, ceremonial, and genuinely haunted-feeling in a way most “dark” records only pretend to be. As a collector piece and a mood object, it absolutely lands.