Switzerland’s Hellhammer lasted only a few years in the early 80’s, before the band became the mighty Celtic Frost.  Hellhammer was influential to many death/thrash/black metal bands across the world for decades since their early reformation with the new name.

Tom Gabriel Warrior had a vision years ago with Celtic Frost finally laid to rest and in between his Triptykon shows resurrected the spirit of Hellhammer, under the moniker Triumph of Death, which was one of  the songs off that first Hellhammer ep, Apocalyptic Raids, from 1984 and the song title was their 1983 demo as well.  What’s super cool is that Tom, knowing that those songs were primitive, in nature, really wanted to show the proper respect of that name, since it was the start of his musical journey.  Full circle if you will.  The Hellhammer name would start to get noticed more in 2008 with the double disc release of the Demon Entrails cd which was the remastering of the band’s demo tapes.  29 songs in total-impressive.

With that being said Tom some years ago put together Triumph of Death.  He took the reigns of main vocals and guitar and André Mathieu – on guitar/vocals, Jamie Lee Cussigh – on bass, and Tim Iso Wey – drums.  The band set out to start bringing these classic songs to the masses by playing live shows.  Soon the band was getting offers around the globe to play festivals and Tom felt, maybe if we capture the true spirit of Hellhammer we could put out a live recording of these songs sounding super powerful and that is exactly what the man did.

Resurrection of the Flesh was recorded at three festival appearances during 2023 in Houston (USA), Munich (GER) and Barroselas (PT).  They took the best-sounding songs, put them together and it sounds like one cohesive live album.  I will mention in 2022 I saw Triumph of Death at MDF.  It was wonderful.  The outside crowd was packed and the Satanic Hispanics were starting circle pits all throughout the set.  The highlight was after one of the songs, all of us in the crowd started to do the Warrior Grunts.  Uggghgghhhhh, Ugggghhhhhhhh, over and over and over again.  Tom put his hands on his guitar and looked at all of us, and started to get choked up.  He just took a step back, then and put his head down and then spoke softly into the microphone about how much that meant to him and he was blown away.  A very “Real” live moment that I will forever cherish.

These songs are perfectly recorded and you will forget it’s a live album at times, due to the production and mix.  The 6 songs, from their first official release, are all here with the opening being “The Third of the Storms (Evoked Damnation)”, as well as 6 other songs.  After a musical opening of drums crashing and guitars and such the opening riff is played, by Tom, very deliberately.  The band being very cautious to not speed up the songs and keep true to their original pace.  The opening riff, with more modern instruments etc….is so frickin’ heavy, it’s criminal.  The Uggghhhhhh that Tom lets out in the beginning is so on point and his vocals sound, fantastic, just like at the last MDF.  The band is very tight and the rhythm section is a well oiled machine having many live shows under their belts, by the time these songs were all poached from the various live shows, contained herein.

“Maniac” sounds excellent with the galloping drum pace and the grunts.  The song, in some respect, has a punkish feel to it.  “Decapitator” with Jamie’s killer opening fuzzy bass guitar adds quite a bottom end to the song and the song picks up to that classic early 80’s galloping pace.  This song sounds massive live, as does “Horus/Aggressor”, which is probably one of my favorite underground metal songs of all time.  I always loved the slow build up, then the flip floppity double bass, then right into that mid-paced galloping speed which is so crushingly heavy live.  If you’re not growling those opening vocal lines: “Was it tomorrow.. Or will it be yesterday”, then crawl back under that rock from whence you came!

As previously mentioned the recording is massive sounding and the deluxe mediabook is gorgeous.  Thick glossy cover and a ridiculous amount of live pictures, captured incredibly well.  The release is dedicated to Martin E. Ain (R.I.P. 2017), who was the original Hellhammer and Celtic Frost bassist and highly influential person in the music scene.  I was very happy to see Tom dedicating this release to his fallen brother.  Triumph of Death’s Resurrection of the Flesh is a no brainer purchase if you loved Hellhammer/Frost.  Maybe there will be more releases, who knows, but this is killer.

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