Spellhammer - "Goat's Hill" (2011)

SPELLHAMMER "Goat's Hill"

Year: 2011
Genre: Old School Black Metal
Country: Finland

Track List:

1. Gates of Iron-Ore (Intro)
2. Magick Death
3. Cryptical Wolf
4. Goat's Hill
5. Spellhammer
6. Enslaver Necro
7. Storm Burial (Outro & Introduction to Tattarmass Sessions)
8. Tyrantic Sword
9. Swamp Risen Treasure
10. Conjuror Merciless

Release notes:

"this album was recorded in two parts, first 7 tracks being the original goats hill sessions, recorded in käpylä recording dungeon & vocals in a haunted cabin at the forests of sherwood. the last three songs where recorded a month or two later in tattarmass sessions, in käpylä recording dungeon,situated in southern wastelands"

I'm continuing to post old school metal (yes, Odmetnik, now you can't blame me for posting too much crust and hardcore!), and now here's a 2-piece act from Finland called Spellhammer. They're playing old school, 1st wave raw black metal, and have a number of side projects ranging stylistically from doom metal to crust. So far they have released one full-length album "Goat's Hill" at 18th of February 2011.

According to Encyclopaedia Metallum, one of their central lyrical themes is "story of Noita-Kallo". I googled it, but found only several pages in Finnish (which I don't understand at all, and even Google Translate didn't help much), and one short page in Swedish. At first I thought it was something like Dyatlov Pass accident (one of the well-known unsolved mysteries that have inspired many Russian (and not only) BM, industrial and dark ambient projects), but one of the member of Spellhammer explained that it actually refers to the series of grave robbings and cadaver mutilations that took place in Helsinki in the 1930's:

"noita kallio(kallio being his sr name) was this character, a sort of shaman mixed up with black arts and such. this woman who apparently sffered from shizophrenia came for healing and saw these apparitions appearing to the wall saying that in the pond of tattarisuo was a hidden treasure and the spirits in the pond wold give it up if you would give it a hman hand. so the hand didnt help and they gave it another and things escaladed from there. they end feeding the pond several gorpses and body parts, dug up from graves in malmi cemetary, stolen from a morgue in harju. both of those places exist today, the latter in a youth centre and the pond in tattarisuo is lodged between a freeway and a small airport"

The whole album is available from their bandcamp for free (and of course, posting it here is sanctioned). You may also buy it from Satanica Productions (BTW, I see they have a new album by Conrad in their catalog... I definitely should get it!).