ALBUM REVIEW: Witches Hammer – Damnation Is My Salvation

Decades ago, an obscure Canadian Speed Metal band called WITCHES HAMMER unleashed a series of demos and followed this with an EP in 2004. Now they have been resurrected with a full length album. This band is definitely something of a cult phenomena in the underground Speed Metal world. This new record is set to be unleashed via Nuclear War Now Productions on April 25th.

Crisp riffs and thunderous drums bellow into a masterfully morbid onslaught of speeding Extreme Metal violence with howling vocals and maniacal ferocity displayed by the whole band. The almost War Metal levels of intense barbarity hit with utter savagery as the vicious spew of grisly vocals and maniacal instrumentals charge forth with an untamed feral nature. Thrashing out pure malice with excellency, rhythmic assaults and shredding solos intertwine in a vicious conjuration of all things Speed Metal brilliantly. It should be rather obvious that the return of this cult classic band is going to be an unrelenting affair of totally monolithic magnitude.

Hammering forth in an endless cascade of vitriolic speeding prowess, Witches Hammer unleash a macabre and demonic force from hell that cannot be restrained, rampaging for just over thirty minutes with some of the most fierce and magnificent Extreme Metal to be rekindled over the last decade. The blackened edge of the music gives a further malignancy to the already sharp spearhead of Heavy Metal that they launch into the listener with skull-crushing blows from the full band. The intricate intensity of the guitars with the pounding drums assaults and insane lead work is perfectly suited by the vocalists asylum-dwelling, hellish snarls and howls.

This is not only something many Speed Metal fans who know their stuff will have anticipated more than perhaps anything else but something that shall certainly set the underground alight with the black flame of ferocious Extreme Metal with a true feeling of that 80s ferocity before Black, Death, Thrash and Speed were necessarily separate, preferring to deliver total carnage without regard for a genre label. Truly an epic, glorious and grandiose opus of pure Speed Metal perfection that will have every headbanging maniac left in awe at their return, which cannot be argued, is on top form. -9/10