Review by Vladimir on November 22, 2023.

Alright folks, for the second time ever, I will be once again covering a compilation release by a Chilean death/thrash/black metal band Corpsehammer (relocated to Sweden later), and the topic of this review will be their compilation album Sign of the Corpsehammer, released on September 11th, 2019 via Unpure Records, which contains tracks from their first three EP’s (Sacrilegio, Posesión, Perversión).

The musical output that you’ll hear is a combination of second wave black metal with elements of thrash and death metal, with frequent tremolo and thrash riffing, blast beat drumming, aggressive shouting vocals, including some occasional d-beat/punk sections. It’s a very big mix of everything oldschool in terms of its extreme metal roots, and for the most part it seems that it isn’t quite a strange musical brew since it keeps the flow rather smooth and stable. The only thing that seems quite deviating from the majority is the vocals, which as I mentioned before, are aggressively shouting all the way through, with only some brief instances where it switches to some vocal harshness. Although I do not mind this kind of vocals, I personally felt that they just did not flow with me here quite right, because they felt a bit off and not entirely fitting for the general musical output. The sections where the vocal style switches to harsh shouting and gutturals are in my opinion much more suitable for what Corpsehammer is going with, but even if the vocals were perhaps oriented towards something that resembles Tom G. Warrior, I think that it would have worked much better, especially since there are moments in songs that remind of Celtic Frost and Hellhammer. Regardless of how I feel about the vocals, again that’s just my personal opinion and I am not saying that they are genuinely bad, just not quite fitting. Overall, it does not ruin the general instrumental work. The songwriting is fairly simple and straightforward from start to finish with a consistent stylistic approach to both the riffing and the general song structure. Even though the songs do not really manage to strike me like a bolt of lightning, the punkier sections, as well as the Hellhammer and Celtic Frost moments, do however seem to get my mood going. The output is not bad by any means, but at times it feels a bit too familiar or perhaps too generic at times, where you just let it go and not really pay much attention to what is going on. Production-wise, I’d say that it’s quite solid with a not so thin sound, with still some adequate amount of rawness to the guitar tone.

Although it’s nothing spectacular or ground-breaking, it is far from a complete waste of time and it is still worth giving a listen if you’re interested in South American extreme metal. Corpsehammer definitely has a pure aggression and energy flowing through their music and not some excessive need to sound as “true” as possible or present themselves as if they’re a “death to posers” tryhard kind of band. If you ever come across this band and you’d like to give it a try, I’d say go for it, because there is something that you might like despite its small issues that I have addressed.

Rating: 7.2 out of 10