Century Media Records & Prowling Death Records have announced the joint release of the HELLHAMMER Blood Insanity 7" vinyl single, originally conceived by the band in 1984.

The 7" in includes the title track, "Blood Insanity", on the A-side and "Maniac" as B-side. The two songs have been restored and remastered from original demos of 1983.

The worldwide release date for the Blood Insanity 7" will be August 19th, 2016 and the pre-sale via CM Distro has started today at the following location: www.smarturl.it/hhcmdistro

The Blood Insanity 7" release (Which comes packaged in a gatefold sleeve) is limited to a one-time only pressing of 3,000 copies and will be available in the following vinyl editions:

Picture 7" / 500 copies
Silver 7" / 300 copies (Century Media exclusive)
White 7" / 300 copies (Nuclear Blast exclusive)
Clear 7" / 300 copies (High Roller exclusive)
Transparent Red 7" / 600 copies
Black 7" / 1000 copies

All 7" vinyl single copies will be shrink-wrapped in plastic and marked with a colour sticker (Golden colour for the Picture 7") to indicate its respective edition.

Tom Gabriel Warrior: "In early 1984, after HELLHAMMER's third demo Satanic Rites, HELLHAMMER bassist/singer Steve Warrior, HELLHAMMER roadie Marco Dinosaur Suremann, and I contemplated properly releasing some of the music HELLHAMMER had recorded the year before. We planned a NWOBHM-style 7" vinyl single, containing two songs taken from the Triumph Of Death demo recording sessions of June 1983."

The single was to feature Blood Insanity as a title track, and Maniac as its b-side. The cover of the single was to be a photo taken by HELLHAMMER photographer Martin Kyburz in early 1983. We drafted a brief typewriter memo, recording the outline for this single proposal.

At the time, it was difficult and prohibitively expensive for a band to directly contract a manufacturing plant to produce a vinyl record without the involvement of a record company, so the single eventually remained a mere idea, while HELLHAMMER ultimately signed with Noise Records in West Berlin. The Blood Insanity single project thus languished in an unrealized state until the eventual dissolution of HELLHAMMER rendered any plans for further HELLHAMMER releases redundant.

Nonetheless, the unrealized single never really faded from my memory throughout all the commotion associated with HELLHAMMER's past existence during the many years since the band's termination. Moreover, Prowling Death Records, founded in my bedroom in 1983 to release the HELLHAMMER demos, had in the meantime become a proper record company. When I presented the idea to Century Media Records, the long-standing licensing partner of Prowling Death Records, they immediately pledged their support.

The original single was to be issued in a simple card sleeve; but the gatefold format now chosen allows us the luxury to expand the visual presentation: the outside representing the single exactly as it was to be in 1984, the inside adding information about the project's history.

The result is this single, produced in full coordination with the HELLHAMMER members who played on these songs, and designed as faithfully as possible in accordance with the original concept we devised 32 years ago. The two songs have been painstakingly and deferentially restored and remastered from original demos of 1983. The single features the Prowling Death Records number we originally assigned to it: PDR 007."

In related news, Tom Gabriel Warrior's current band TRIPTYKON have just announced two special warm-up concerts in Germany before their appearance at the 2016 edition of the legendary Wacken Open Air festival. The two intimate warm-up concerts will take place in the week before the festival, on August 3rd (Freiburg) and 4th (Essen). Here is a list of the upcoming concerts for TRIPTYKON:

TRIPTYKON Live 2016/2017:
08.03.2016 Freiburg, Germany - Crash
08.04.2016 Essen, Germany - Zeche Carl
08.06.2016 Wacken, Germany - Wacken Open Air
08.13.2016 Kortrijk, Belgium - Alcatraz Hard Rock & Metal Festival
09.08.2016 Hüttikon, Switzerland - Meh Suff! Metal-Festival 2016
03.03.2017 Tilburg, The Netherlands - Netherlands Deathfest II