C'mon, three young Japanese girls named Mika Penetrator, Vivian Slaughter, and Risa Reaper, in black metal raccoon makeup playing primitive, crushing Hellhammer-worshipping doomcrust? Gimmick or not, shit like that is right up my alley. Actually, I first heard about Gallhammer a couple of years ago when they first formed, but at the time I was only able to locate one of their mp3's online and their debut full length Gloomy Lights proved to be an elusive disc for me to locate. Somewhere along the line though Gallhammer was picked up by Peaceville, who have just released this CD and DVD set of rare studio/demo tracks and live performance footage as a precursor to the band's upcoming full length for the label. This set is a terrific overview of the band's brutal, death-tripping slomo battery. Based out of Tokyo, Gallhammer draw from a combined influence of proto-black/doom pioneers Hellhammer and old school UK crust bands Amebix and Axegrinder, with just a trace of new wave/post punk (see the melodic chorus for "Beyond The Hate Red" if ya don't believe me), and create an otherworldly graveyard atmosphere, total dread. The audio disc portion of this release has 12 tracks, including demo versions of two exclusive new songs, and rare tracks that go all the back to before the Gloomy Lights album. Awesome, blackened dirge crust with thunderous plodding drum pounding and grim distorted riffs, and spooky feedback laden ambience drifting between each lumbering song. And the vocals are awesome, a comination of ghastly choking rasps and occasional clean chanting, like undead wraiths emerging from the crypts in some old B&W Japanese horror movie.

And the companion DVD that's included here is even cooler, featuring 24 songs from six shows filmed at various venues in Japan throughout 2005 and 2006. The central footage on the disc is from a pro-shot six-song set in Okayama from 2005, and it's an amazing show: singer/bassist Vivian Slaughter, clad in a Celtic Frost shirt and staring dead into space and grunting into her mic, pounding away at her bass, drummer Risa Reaper looking like a white, hollow-eyed Japanese ghost behind her kit and emitting occcasional backup shrieks, and guitarist Mika Penetrator grinding out sludgy riffs and peals of feedback, the band belting out a hypnotic set that includes "Endless Nauseous Days", "Blind My Eyes", "May Our Father Die", "Song Of Fall", "Hallucination", and "Crucifixion". Awesome. The other footage has more low-fi/videocamera production, but it's all terrific, and there's even a photo gallery of stills to further fuel my fanboy fire. The CD and DVD are encased in a plastic case with photos of the band and Manga-style portaits, and includes a 12 page booklet.