RSS Feed


DEATHHAMMER
Crimson Dawn

Hells Headbangers (2025)
Rating: 8/10

Let the stench of burning leather and hell fire suffocate your soul as Norway’s Deathhammer provides another unhealthy soundtrack to any current catastrophe or impending Armageddon.

As if the rivers of Hades had overflowed and swallowed Earth, Crimson Dawn spills its contents to a soundtrack of tortured screams and spitting guitars. If you want blackened thrash, you got it. Deathhammer brings their A game, puking vitriol with such malice and contempt that one can literally smell the exhaust fumes of Satan’s motorcycle speeding off down Hell’s highway.

‘Abyssic Thunder’ is a smouldering speed metal onslaught rippling with the raucous vocals of Sergeant Salsten who obviously forgot to take a rabies shot after being nibbled by a Carpathian vampire. How a duo can make such a hiss n’ rattle is beyond me; every instrument clashes like swinging chains of rust, clanking and clattering like Lucifer’s scrapyard of shackled souls.

For 40 minutes the audience can sit, stand or stage dive to a veritable feast of oxidized cacophony: ‘Satan’s Sword’ with its New Wave Of British Heavy Metal streak of melody, the catchy mid-paced chugs of the title track, and my brace of favourites, the snappy punky tumult that is ‘Stygian Lust’ and the unholy spike of ‘Legacy Of Pain’.

All of this sounds like an acidic feast leftover from old Venom, Sodom and Slayer’s Show No Mercy, a literal banquet of eructed violence and force. I also highly recommend several spins of the final track, ‘Into The Blackness Of Hell’, which simmers with the same sinister intent of Slayer’s classic cut ‘Hell Awaits’, except Deathhammer’s track sounds more toxic and primordial, cast from the hottest pits.

Norway has always coughed up deadly serious evil, and these merchants are six albums in to their blasphemous reign… and long may it continue.

Neil Arnold

<< Back to Album & EP Reviews



Related Posts via Categories
Share