Hellhammer - Apocalyptic Raids 1990 A.D. (1983 - reissued Doomy Black Metal - Venom, Celtic Frost)

Looking back it seems pretty silly to me that there was apperently so much beef between Metal kids and Punk kids (read as, hardcore not new-wavey bullshit). What they were doing wasn't so dissimilar. Motorhead was apparently the only band able to sucessfuly cross this divide, and their similarities would become more obvious when Grindcore devoleped in the later 80's.

But even then, I always assumed that what the two genres shared in spired, they differed in technique. Hardcore was about being short-fast-and-loud. Metal was only a slightly different take on a similar formula fast-loud-and-techniquely exreem. Slow-loud could work too, but technique seemed to be the major deciding factor.

Now listed to a band like Hellhammer. Heavily influenced by Venom from a few years before, both bands play a sort of primitive-metal that's a bit like regular only played by kids who have little knowladge of their instraments.

Hellhammer is noteworthy to most people only because it is Tom G. Warrior first band, later of Celtic Frost fame. This matters little to me, because the two bands are hardly the same. Celtic Frost's almost Wagnerian bombast is instead replaced by severly detuned guitar rumbling and Tom Warrior grunting and howling unintelligably (yes, im certing that at times is is just grunting and howling, no words).


So back to the hardcore/metal connection, I realy don't see to much of how this labodamy-metal is dissimilar to what hardcore bands like Discharge or Charged G.B.H. were doing at the same time. Demim, leather, studded belts... same dif.

Hell even the slow and brutal 9:30 "Triumph of Death" is in my opinion, very similar the the second side of Black Flag's My War alubm, in its sub-sub-Black Sabbath dirg. Tom G. Warrior and Henry Rollins' mad-man-cutting-off-his-own-leg routine is fairly interchangable.


This album was orriginaly released as a demo titled Apocalyptic Raids and this is a 1990 reissue. The only difference is that the last two songs on the reissue are not from that demo but are from a Death Metal Sampler that had never before been released in the U.S.






- overview by Denez

tracklist:

1. The Third of the Stoms (Evoked Damnation)
2. Massacra
3. Triumph of Death
4. Horus/Aggressor
5. Revelations of Doom
6. Messiah
   

Buy it here.

http://rapidshare.de/files/18879496/Hellhammer.rar.html