Into Day Two we go, and another new album to check out, the second one from January as we review another release that has been
As you all know, Death Metal is generally not my thing, but this is Metal Month after all, and it's unfair of me to restrict reviews to albums from genres I personally like, and indeed I've tried to avoid that over the last two years this has been running, resulting in some pretty nasty headaches for me! In keeping with that tradition then of all-inclusion, here's the next new album I want to take a look at.
Crusade Zero --- Hate --- 2015 (Napalm)
Introduction: With a name like Hate, you probably can guess what to expect, and I guess if they weren't a Death Metal band then maybe the name might belie them, but in this instance I sincerely doubt it. Hate come from Poland, which is certainly interesting: I'm not aware of too many DM bands that hail from there, though of course as I just said I know very little about this subgenre, so for all I know the country could be crawling with them. It could be the epicentre and focal point of Death Metal. But again, I kind of doubt it. This is Hate's ninth album, and looking at them on their Wiki page, well, they don't look like the kind of dudes you would invite in to watch Grey's Anatomy, do they? They'd probably be more interested in exploring
your anatomy! Preferably from the inside.
Okay, that's enough generic slurs on Death Metal and this band in particular. Let's get down to cases. Cotton wool at the ready, here we go!
Track-by-track
1. Vox Dei (A call from beyond): This is short, so expecting an instrumental. Thunder booms, guitar wails, rains falls, sort of synthy strings? Dark, pealing bass and guitar gives you the idea that, um, something wicked this way comes. A minute and a half, and as expected it's an introductory instrumental.
2. Lord, make me an instrument of thy wrath! Another short one, another instrumental? Could be. Sort of carryon from the opener, perhaps odd to have two short instrumentals opening the album but we'll see. At least it's holding back the moment when I have to face the vocals!
3. Death liberator: And there they are. Here's where the music really begins. Deep, growly voice as I expected as singer Adam “ATF Sinner” (?) Buszko lets loose, but to be fair he's not too indecipherable. Ah, how you've matured, Trollheart, eh? There was a time when I wouldn't even think of listening to vocals like this, now I can comment on them. The music meanwhile is heavy, guitar-driven of course but not quite as aggressive as I would have expected it to be. Most of the tracks here seem to alternate between the five-to-six-minute mark and a minute or more, the latter of which I assume are little instrumentals and interludes. This is one of the longer ones, six minutes exactly, and you know, it's not bad. That main riff is to die for.
4. Leviathan: Starts with some feedback and sound effects which are I guess meant to conjure up visions of the great beast rising up out of the sea, then it's kind of dark and Sabbathy with a great grinding riff attended by another great riff. ATF Sinner seems to want to just sing (or bellow) something like
“The beast called (?) Leviathan!” over and over. The lads on the guitars though are keeping it real. Take a bow, Konrad “Destroyer” Ramatowski, and ATF himself, who also takes axe duties in Hate. Ok, now ATF is singing more words, but I can't make most of them out. He's certainly passionate though. Great sense of doom and catastrophe on this track.
5. Doomsday celebrities: Another great heavy guitar line, thunderous drums and a big roar from ATF, something about embracing the silence? Superb.
6. Hate is the law: I already love it for the title! A great crushingly heavy opening, then it really gets going with guttural vocals from ATF and punishing guitar from him and the other lad. Sweet. Did he just growl
“Rip this fucking world apart?” Ah, bless!
7. Valley of darkness: He brings fire, apparently. And in case you didn't hear him the first time, he brings fire, and he'll keep bringing it, as the vocal just keeps repeating pretty much the same sentence. So, what does he bring? Anyone? Hilarious. Great guitar passage near the end.
8. Crusade: zero: Wonderful chimy guitar work with some sort of bells pealing near the end and ol' ATF holding like a Black Mass or something. Or maybe reading his shopping list, I don't know. Sounds dark though, and
“There's no light at the end of the tunnel”, he assures us.
9. The omnipresence: One of those shorter tracks; kind of ambient, atmospheric, spooky. An instrumental, one assumes? One is right.
10. Rise Omega the consequence! Odd title, doesn't scan. Good powerful dramatic guitar opening though, hammers along nicely.
11. Dawn of war: Another big instrumental intro and then it's all Sabbath for a while until it picks up and puts on its running shoes. For a six-minute track this does not drag at all.
12. Black aura debris: Another short one to end on, just shy of two minutes. An instrumental? You bet. Almost a case of “Welcome to the machine”, with its mechanical, droning ambient sound as a big guitar punches and slices across it. Maybe that's meant to be the world after Armageddon? Good ending.
Conclusion: Who would have thought I could ever enjoy a Death Metal album, especially one with those kind of vocals? But I did, very much so. I'm not saying I'd go back to it and listen to it for pleasure or anything, but it was a hell of a lot better than some of the albums I had to listen to last year. Or maybe I'm just maturing. Is that possible? Answers on a postcard... ah, ask yer da!