Warhammer

The German trio Warhammer formed with a very specific aim in mind: to pay tribute to the long-defunct Swiss metal band Hellhammer (the precursor to the better-known and longer-lived Celtic Frost) by faithfully replicating their primitive doom/death metal sound, their album artwork aesthetic, and so forth. Hellhammer, who broke up in the early '80s, had just one EP to their name; Warhammer, in contrast, has stayed together long enough to release several full-length albums and sign with one of the biggest underground metal labels, Nuclear Blast. The group formed in 1994 and recorded a demo in 1996, Towards the Chapter of Chaos, which led them to sign with Voices Productions. This label released Warhammer's debut album, The Winter of Our Discontent (1997), which featured the lineup of guitarist/bassist Frank Krynojewski, vocalist Volker French, and drummer Rolf Meyn. Deathchrist, their sophomore release, followed in 1999, this time on the Grind Syndicate Media imprint, a subsidiary of Germany's Nuclear Blast Records. For this album, the group enlisted Rainer Filipiak to play guitar, which also gave them more flexibility to play live. The band then officially moved over to Nuclear Blast for their third album, 2001's The Doom Messiah. Nuclear Blast also released Warhammer's fourth album, Curse of the Absolute Eclipse, which came out in 2002 and was the band's first album to be distributed in the U.S. By this stage, they had settled back into a trio lineup, with Krynojewski on guitar and bass, French on vocals, and drummer Jens Küchental on board in place of Meyn.