Gallhammer is an all woman band from Japan that combines crust punk, doom and black metal to create a dense and claustrophobic attack on the senses. The ladies have been around for a while now with their debut album Gloomy Lights (2005) getting them a fair amount of recognition and press in mainstream magazines like Metal Hammer. This year sees the trio release their second album Ill Innocence on Peaceville Records.

Now, the debut Gloomy Lights is an album that I enjoy quite a bit. It’s slow, heavy as fuck and sounds for the most part like a faster version of countrymen Church Of Misery sans the guitar leads. Ill Innocence kicks off in similar fashion with the lurching At The Onset Of The Age Of Despair. The song is slow, dark and brooding and sounds like Discharge jamming with Black Sabbath. Pretty promising start and no real sign of any black metal. However, the black metal influence rears its head soon enough and Speed Of Blood is proper old school black metal. Short and unrelenting in pace, the song pays homage to Darkthrone. Blind My Eyes goes for a catchy feel with a groove and what not but the squeals interspersed through the song courtesy of the vocalist makes this quite a difficult listen.

The band might cite black metal as an influence in their sound but that is quite a minor aspect. The sludgy dirty feel of these songs is closer in spirit to countrymen Boris with a Discharge influence. Case in point is Ripper In The Gloom with a quiet intro that suddenly rushes into total hardcore fury and a kickass punk groove. Killed By The Queen is another short stomper where the band meld the grind crust sound with a chaotic black metal feel. Quite kickass.

Now I expect bands from Japan to be a little messed up in the head and create music that’s really not like anything else out there and bands like Sigh, Boris, Church Of Misery and Merzbow have raised the bar on head fucking brilliance to almost unattainable heights. So considering the weight of expectation placed on Gallhammer (only due to geography) I have to say that these women have come out about even. Ill Innocence is an entertaining slice of music that has some good songs but overall the band seem like they’re still searching for their sound to a certain extent and I prefer the debut over this.