Hellhammer, in their short lived career, forever changed the face of black/death metal. Inspired by the likes of Venom, these Swiss bastards churned out three demos, all of which were slagged to hell and back by the bigger "metal" zines of the time (Metal Forces being the most vehemently anti-Hellhammer of the lot), and praised by a select few. Eventually, Hellhammer were picked up by NOISE records (because of the ammount of publicity surrounding "the worst band in the world"), and released their first (and only) EP, "Apocalyptic Raids", along with also contributing two tracks to the "Death Metal" sampler. The rest (as they say) is history...

"Apocalyptic Raids" is one of the ugliest sounding recordings of all time. The guitars are bottom saturated pools of mud, the bass lethargic to the point of being comatose, the drums plodding (even when played quickly), and the vocals...oh, those vocals...we're talking some seriously fucking anguished sounding death grunts. Opening with the "punky" (for lack of a better word to describe the horrible performance) "The Third Of The Storms" and the quicker in pace (although equally barbaric in execution) second track "Massacra", this is not a record to be taken lightly. Both of these tracks (along with the fourth track, "Horus/Aggressor", which comes off sort of like Motorhead's "Overkill" - if Motorhead had zero musical ability and a serious penchant for all things esoteric) are seriously ugly. I'm not talking "I got drunk and slept with some ugly female" ugly - this is more akin to the horror one might experience after a night of heavy drinking followed by doing the nastiest of nasties with some dog-faced pigwhore, only to discover in the morning that she's actually a transexual AND your lost lost step-brother all in one shot. But as ugly as those three tracks are, *nothing*, and I do mean *nothing* compares to the utterly hellish racket that is the third song on this EP, "Triumph Of Death". I know I've used the term "words can not describe the blah blah blah blah that is this record", but if there was ever a time to give credence to a statement, THIS would be it. "Triumph Of Death" is equal to condensing an eternity of suffering into 9 minutes and 32 seconds. If you could somehow capture what the sound of a corpse decomposing would be, this would be a notch (or three) more vile...an absolute fucking masterpeice of metal that I doubt I'll ever hear topped in my (or your) lifetime. This is the track that makes the EP essential to any collection of "extreme metal" - it is the epoch of all metal.

On top of the already mentioned masterpeices, the re-issues of the mCD (there are at least 3 different pressings of this that I know of, including a recent version that features the original artwork as found on the vinyl) also contain the two tracks from the "Death Metal" sampler as bonus selections (these being "Revelations Of Doom" and the Hellhammer classic "Messiah").

There are two types of people in the world : those who can appreciate Hellhammer, and those who can not. If you're of the second catagory, go away - you're a useless 'tard and I won't waste any of my time trying to "show you the light". But for those of us who don't spend our spare time listening to Arcturus and Covenant 'coz "being musically open minded is elite", I urge you all to pick up this release immediately (I would suggest the latest version that contains the original cover art of course, and not the feces they used in it's place on the original CD versions)...

© 1999 chorazaim