FINALLY have both the CD and the new 2023 vinyl edition of this cult 1990s doom-metal classic on the shelves again. Here’s my previous review of this extreme doom classic:

Huh, I totally forgot that this was actually the first-ever release from Southern Lord. So there's a bit of history for you. Certainly makes sense: the Thorr's Hammer recordings easily set the stage for the world of extreme doom metal and crushing slo-mo heaviness that the Lord would dominate for the first five years or so of the label's existence. Their music first appeared via the Sannhet i Blodet demo, followed by the 1996 full-length cassette Dommedagsnatt released on Moribund Records; from what I know, the only other appearance of the band around this time was the inclusion of the Dommedagsnatt track "Troll" , which was featured a year later on the hard-to-find The Awakening: Females in Extreme Music compilation produced by Dwell Records. The limited amount of recorded material makes sense; this band was short-lived to say the least, existing as a physical group for just six fucking weeks, but not only is the music itself highly influential on slow motion metal to come, but it also has this background story I find strangely romantic, in a teenage-metalhead sort of way. Of course, this band is probably best known for being the first collaborative musical project from Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley, who would follow this up with their Earth-worshiping "ambient metal" project Sunn O))), playing alongside Burning Witch drummer Jamie Sykes and bassist James Hale. But Thorr's Hammer is even more special for having the presence of Runhild Gammelsæter, a seventeen-year-old Norwegian foreign exchange student who had befriended this Seattle-based crew.

And then Gammelsæter returned home to Oslo, Norway, and that was that. Except, the chunk of obsidian sound these kids created was incredible. Just the look of the band was bewitching, but when you first put on Dommedagsnatt and it washes over you for the first time, good lord. This band was carving out something beyond the norm, the opening to the album softly drifting with Gammelsæter's soft, girlish singing in her native tongue. Then everyone kicks in, and it's some of the heaviest goddamn stuff anyone had hear up that point. Gammelsaeter delivered insanely harsh, guttural vocals for Thorr's Hammer that you'll have a hard time believing came out of the throat of a teenage girl. It's ridiculous. Her vocal presence is monstrous. She sounds like an enraged, stoned caveman. That weird opposition is made all the more intense as the music dips in and out of these slower, calmer interludes where her actual singing comes floating back in. Runhild kicks in with a total Tom Warrior style eugh deathgrunt at the beginning of 'Norge" that knocks my sneakers off. The three songs that make up most of this collection are the original Dommedagsnatt material: "Norge", "Troll" , and "Dommedagsnatt": extreme tarpit-crawling magma-doom that brings the walls down at the same level as predecessors Winter, Disembowelment, Thergothon, and Esoteric. With their one unique syntax beyond her vocals, though. The use of space, silence, and restraint creates crushing dynamics throughout each song, while simple but haunting melodies are woven amongst the crumbling, down-tuned sludge. Opener "Norge" remains a fave; it starts off with Runhild's droning clean, melodic chants, sounding like some dreamworld tundra maiden over subdued ambient rumble. When she abruptly shifts into her ferocious, demonic death-belch, and the band fully kicks in with the massive petrified riffs, it's totally flattening. 'Troll' and 'Dommedagsnatt' are equally grinding, each one a slo-mo assault of cinder-block riffs and somber, droning amp-murk. Man, it's great.

This reissue also adds the live track 'Mollom Galgene', a twelve--minute slog through creeping, chugging, mutant Sabbathian dirge. It sounds completely fucked. Slightly fuzzy recording, but that low-fi murkiness fits nicely with the shambling, saurian crawl, a total dead-end bummer that must have had at least a couple people in the audience think about breaking their beer glass and shredding their wrists. All in, this complete collection adds up to just over half an hour of awesomely brutal doom-stench, roiling with huge drones and reverberating speaker cones, their rumbling shadow of the instruments rendered even more unearthly as Runhild's Norwegian poetry lilts overhead (thankfully, the disc features all of the Nordic lyrics along with some brief liner notes).