Jar of Kingdom is the debut album by Australianprogressive metal band, Alchemist. The band recorded the album after receiving a record contract in the mail from Austrian label Lethal Records and was released by that company in October 1993. During the recording of the first track "Abstraction", vocalist Adam Agius damaged his voice, thus resulting in the raw vocal sound on the rest of the album. The name "Jar of Kingdom" was inspired by a comment by television personality and entertainer Graham Kennedy during a comedy skit, in which he described a vial of pig semen as a "jar of kingdom".[2]Jar of Kingdom featured early experiments with synthesisers, acoustic guitars and samples: "Whale" includes the sample of a humpback whalesong. All tracks from this album except "Wandering and Wondering" and "Whale" later appeared on the Embryonics compilation.
The album was dedicated to the memory of John Munns and David Carter.
In 1999, Jar of Kingdom was remastered and re-released by Thrust and distributed by Shock Records in Australia. The album was offered to the label by the band in order for them to be released from their contract to enable them to seek international distribution with other companies. This re-released version was a compilation of the original album together with Alchemist's demo of 1991.
