The demo tape was also sent to Tommy Vance of BBC Radio 1's Friday Rock Show, to see if he would review it in his column for Metal Hammer magazine.

Immediately plans were put in place to record the band's debut LP at Horus Sound Studio in Hannover, Germany, in September 1987.

Speaking to Metal Hammer magazine after the recording of the album, lyricist Martin Walkyier explained that "Hosanna in Excelsis" describes "the last fight between Heaven and Hell and is based on the bible", referring to the subject matter of the Book of Revelation.

One of the band's more recently composed songs at the time of the recording of the album, "Behind the Crooked Cross" is based upon themes raised in historian and biographer Gerald Suster’s book, Hitler and the Age of Horus.

Speaking to Metal Forces magazine before the album’s recording, Walkyier stated that the song addresses "the question was Hitler a madman or a magician?...

shortly before the album's release, bassist Frazer Craske explained that he and Walkyier had attended a sermon by evangelist Billy Graham.

It was subsequently mixed in Berlin by producer Roy M. Rowland and released in 1988, bearing artwork drawn by the band's White Dwarf contact, John Blanche, entitled 22Horned Is the Hunter.

The new edition features an expanded booklet with extra photos and liner notes, a remastered sound (done by the band's own Andy Sneap), and five bonus live tracks, recorded in East Berlin in 1990: Sabbat Production