Deathhammer is a name that should be known to you if you've followed either black metal or thrash at any point in the last 20 years. Their records for Hells Headbangers always strike quick and hard, and this one is no exception, which is a feat for a sixth studio album and a band with a defined sound. See, some of us in the underground (yes, there is still an underground, more of a spirit now than an actual network) like when a band doesn't change drastically. Sure they can throw new sorts of riffs at us, new little tricks, but if the core remains the same we are generally happy with it as long as the quality remains high. Deathhammer is a band like that. They don't change, they don't "progress," they don't do anything other than what they've promised us, and that is deliver fast blackthrash in the best way possible. Echoes of Norwegian black metal's sound can be heard under the corpsepile of Germanic thrash and speed metal, as can some Celtic Frost influence in some certain songs. This is about the old ways of metal, not the trends that exist today. They came to prominence at a point when blackened thrash was on the rise, and now that it's cemented itself as a subgenre, this band has taken a kingly position among the rest. Songwriting is their key to success, as well as an underrated ability to play some truly tricky and skilled stuff that's hiding in all the madness. They do have a sense of melody behind the crashing drums and aggressive riffs. Every song here is memorable in the same way as the records you bought when you first found metal and were blown away by Destruction, Kreator, or Sodom, whether it was in the majestic 1980s or the early 1990s as those bands were stripping the blackness out of their sound for something more polished but still violent. I hesitate to compare them too closely to those progenitors since their sounds have strayed so far from what Deathhammer is doing. This is honest music, not an attempt at nostalgia, and should be regarded as such. Just because they are playing a style made famous in the 1980s does not mean the style lived and died in that decade and didn't attract a new set of followers and purveyors. Go to Hells, get this album when it's out, and be thrashed into pulp. You will not be disappointed. Note: the cover is also awesome, I love when bands use photos of themselves.
Deathhammer
Hells Headbangers
