HellHammer - Demon Entrails

Goddamn!!!!!! This is a fucking gift from the metal gods if there are such a thing. The first demos from the legendary pre-Celtic Frost band, Hellhammer in a gloriously packaged 2-CD set housed in a DVD-sized mediabook with O-Card plus 36-page booklet w/ extended liner notes, photos and a small poster. This is also available as a bare-bones 2-CD set in a digipak, but I recommend getting this special edition. 29 songs in all, re-mastered from original master copies by Tom Gabriel and Martin Eric Ain. They also dove into their personal archives to supply photo's and never before seen art work.

This set is an important chapter in the shaping of European Black Metal and every fan of Celtic Frost, 80's thrash, European thrash, black metal or just brutal music should make every effort to find this. It's probably hard to find in some areas of the world and if you have to have only the music, the bare bones set is fine, but the extras in the special edition are worth having, plus the price difference is not that much anyway.

These early demos even better than Hellhammer's only "official" 12" LP, the infamous APOCALYPTIC RAIDS, which at the time, was met with scathing reviews, but now remains a classic. It really shows their progression into what would later become Celtic Frost

These demos are actually presented backwards, meaning that Disc 1 starts with the latest demo of the 3, SATANIC RITES, the second disc contains 2 demos, DEATH FIEND and TRIUMPH OF DEATH, so I would recommend starting with Disc 2, then Disc 1.

It's really interesting to hear some of these songs, because much of the material would later be reworked into the early Celtic Frost repertoire. SATANIC RITES is my favorite of the 3 demos, sounding and feeling very much like the bastard child of Frost's MORBID TALES.

This is classic stuff, don't miss out. This will probably go out of print quickly. There is also an upcoming book coming out this year titled "ONLY DEATH IS REAL - The illustrated history of Hellhammer and Early Celtic Frost" written by Tom Gabriel Fischer. There is a page excerpt from the book in this set. Definitely looking forward to this band. Not an overlooked band by any means, but perhaps their importance in the history of black metal may be a bit under appreciated.