Thomas Gabriel Warrior was not born, he was spewed forth from the anus of the nine-headed hydra.  Coming into this world fully-armed with the ability to create the darkest, crudest, most remarkably disturbing music in existence, Warrior has always taken his craft seriously.  Best known for leading the quirky Celtic Frost through eight studio albums and EPs, CF's recorded output always built on the framework of their previous releases, growing ever more avant garde while still retaining their trademark massive heaviness.  However, before Celtic Frost, came the horror that is Hellhammer.

The mythos of Hellhammer has clung to Warrior like a gibbering demon.  Bootlegged and bloody, Hellhammer has had its guts leaked out to us, little by little over the years.   But now, finally, in all its satanic repugnance, “Demon Entrails” has been unleashed.  The title must refer to the unhallowed bowls in which these excursions into depravity were recorded.  Warrior (known in those legendary times as “Satanic Slaughter”) and his comrade in loathesomeness, bassist Martin Ain ( or “Slayed Necros”, who replaced original member Steve Warrior – no relation) plunged headlong into Hellhammer with youthful enthusiasm but without the nuisance of such bothersome trifles as musicianship, decent recording facilities or coherence of concept.  The result was absolutely like nothing else ever heard before or since.  Satanic sludge of monumentally wretched proportions rumble forth, and we, the listener can only cower and tremble in the face of such disharmonious atrocity. 

“Demon Entrails” consists of 2 discs, combining the mythic “Death Fiend/Triumph of Death” and “Satanic Rites” demos, which were released in 1983 and mercilessly bootlegged over the years.  Conspicuouly absent is the one “offical” Hellhammer release, 1984's “Apocalyptic Raids”.  Perhaps its far-superior sound-quality (it was only recorded in a mouldering sepulchre instead of a demon's intestinal tract) was deemed too professional to appear side-by-side with these slabs of primitive bombast.  Or, maybe, Tom G. just needs you to shell out the extra scratch for a seperate copy of that CD.  To try and review “Demon Entrails” as if it were just another heavy metal record is both ludicrous and impossible.  Songs like “Third of the Storms (Evoked Damnation)” and “Buried and Forgotten”, sonically and artistically make Venom look like Beethoven.  There's something so fundamentally awful about this “music” that it becomes elevated to a place of special importance.  To say that Hellhammer was influential is an understatement of monumental proportions.  One of the early fathers of the Black Metal movement took his name from a Hellhammer song (“Euronymous”).  Countless church-burning, goat-killing, corpse-paint-wearing youths hefted their axes and struggled to emulate the phlegmatic grunts, groans and screams of Thomas Gabriel Warrior after the appearance of “Apocalyptic Raids”  - they were legion and they spread their pestilence across the land, with fire and filth.  Napalm Death and Sepultura have both recorded Hellhammer covers. 

Sloppy? Yes.  Rough?  Yes.  Lyrically ridiculous and immature?  Oh, yes.  Still, there's something about this mess that clings to you like a blood-filled leech, black and pulsing with malevolent life. 

Rating: 10 skulls out of 10