Tom G Warrior Celebrates Hellhammer With Triumph of Death Album

Tom G Warrior will forever be known as the founder and frontman for extreme metal legends Hellhammer and Celtic Frost and today, he's cementing the legacy of Hellhammer thanks to his latest project, Triumph of Death.

"It was an idea that I had many, many years ago," Warrior told Chuck Armstrong on Friday's Loudwire Nights (Nov. 10). "I've been covering Hellhammer's music already with Celtic Frost in the '80s and with my industrial act, Apollyon Sun, in the late-'90s. When Martin Eric Ain and I reformed Celtic Frost in 2001, we also played Hellhammer music during rehearsals and we intended to play some on the Monotheist tour, but it didn't really click with that material."

For many years after, Warrior considered different ways he could bring Hellhammer's music back to the stage. He finally figured the best way to do this was to form a dedicated tribute band — and that's when Triumph of Death was born.

"I always thought that Triumph of Death would actually become a working band," he said. "When I had the concept in my mind, I thought it really makes sense to record what we're doing, even if it's just for us personally. So we recorded a number of concerts in the past few years, just to have a memento of this."

That memento eventually turned into an official release because, as Warrior put it, "Some of the recordings were actually good." Resurrection of the Flesh serves as Triumph of Death's debut live album, capturing recordings from three different shows in 2023: Houston, Munich and Barroselas.

As he reflected on his history as the frontman of many different metal bands, Warrior was slow to assess the lasting success of Hellhammer, a band that was only active from 1982 to 1984 and that never released an official studio album.

"I'm here by the grace of the audience — and I'm not saying that as a hollow sentence. I'm very aware that I owe my entire career to the goodwill, the grace of the people in the audience. Without them, I would be nobody ... It's an enormous gift that they're bestowing upon me, by letting me be a musician and also by letting me resurrect my earliest music. It's a gift that I don't take for granted and I'm infinitely grateful for."

What Else Did Tom G Warrior Discuss on Loudwire Nights?

What it's like recording 40-year-old songs with modern technology: "It sounds so good."
What it means to him to be considered a significant source of influence and inspiration in the worlds of black and extreme metal: "Forty years ago, I didn't have a secret recipe and I didn't know I was foretelling what would become of our scene. I didn't know there would be one extreme metal scene eventually."
Why he loves and still collects vinyl records