Review TRIUMPH OF DEATH ‘Resurrection of the Flesh – Live 2023’

There are only a very few bands that have had a greater influence on the development of heavy metal than Hellhammer. Extreme metal was anything but established in the early 80s and it was albums like Accept’s ‘Restless and Wild’ and Scorpions with ‘Blackout’ that spearheaded the genre, while Venom’s ‘Black Metal’ was one of the most extreme longplayers of the time. Exactly at this epoch of heavy guitar music a band evolved in the peaceful village of Birchwil in Switzerland, which to this day bears a sonorous name – Hellhammer.

Hellhammer were due to Ursuppe from which later Celtic Frost and much later Triptykon arose. In the two years of their existence, Hellhammer released three demos, an EP and a split record with bands like Helloween, Running Wild and Dark Avenger. Even without a studio album, the band’s musical legacy is more than relevant and so a record called ‘Resurrection of the Flesh’, presented by Triumph Of Death, hits the stores these days.

It is a live record that pays tribute to the work of Hellhammer. To present the whole experience as Triumph Of Death is a clever move, because on the one hand the uniqueness of Hellhammer remains untouched and at the same time Tom G. Warrior has found an outlet to bring Hellhammer’s songs back into the spotlight 40 years after their foundation.

The base of this live disc are three performances of the band. Recorded in the spring of 2023 at Hell’s Heroes Festival in Houston, Dark Easter Metal Meeting in Munich and SWR Barroselas Metal Fest in Portugal, the album offers twelve Hellhammer milestones. With an hour of playing time, you get everything that distinguished the band from the other bands at the time. It is this diabolic mix of metal and anarchic punk, which fascinates and reveals its hellish grin widely in the opener ‘The Third of the Storm (Evoke Damnation)’ from the ‘Satanic Rites’ demo. From the same demo comes, among others, the doomy ‘Reaper’ and vicious ‘Messiah’.

It goes without saying that the track that provides the name of today’s band, ‘Triumph Of Death’, is the closing song. During 13 minutes the band unleashes an infernal musical spectacle, which shows the variety of extreme metal. If you close your eyes, the song takes you to the underworld and you see the purgatory blazing. At a snail’s pace the guitars find their way into the mind of the listener and at the same time it is Warrior’s intense vocal performance that carries you away. The way he shouts out the lyrics is impressive.

Music lives from emotions of any kind. With Hellhammer it’s the world of darkness, gloom and rage that breaks its way out through each of their songs. Even four decades after the band’s disbanding, the songs have not lost anything of their timeless and morbid brilliance. ‘Resurrection of the Flesh’, this album belongs in every serious record collection.