Striking down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger
It might be a little premature to call Hate Eternal's fourth album the penultimate death metal release of 2008, but it's hard to imagine another band topping the level of soul crushing, tempestuous wrath the quartet displays on Fury and Flames.
Surrounding himself with a revamped lineup that includes members of Cannibal Corpse and Dim Mak, guitarist/vocalist/producer Erik Rutan is at the top of his game on Fury and Flames, creating some of the harshest, most abrasive death metal you're likely to hear this year. Each track is a perfect storm of controlled chaos, sounding as if the members of Hate Eternal are barely able to keep the dark musical forces at their command in check. The album feels like it could spiral out of control at any given moment, but Hate Eternal manage to reign in this heaving musical maelstrom and shape it into a frightening display of staggering technicality and unabating savagery.
It takes an extremely talented batch of musicians to pull off the level of complexity displayed in the songwriting on Fury and Flames, and each member of the new and improved Hate Eternal lineup delivers a flawless, career-defining performance. Newcomer Jade Simonetto is an absolute behemoth behind the kit, his drumming a near-perfect mix of pinpoint precision and unrelenting speed while bassist Alex Webster's spider-fingered fretwork adds to the earthshaking bottom-end. Meanwhile, the absolutely destructive guitars of Rutan and Shaune Kelley are the album's focal-point, a pair of gale-force cyclones riding atop the rhythm section as Rutan bellows his apocalyptic diatribes in an appropriately demonic growl.
Throughout the album, one can't help but think of the members of Hate Eternal as a conduit for the stygian energies of some sort of Lovecraftian elder god rather than a group of mere mortal musicians, such is the otherworldly ambience created by Rutan's production work. Although each instrument is audible, the recording has a seething, antediluvian quality to it that perfectly suits the tumultuous music, creating an atmosphere of irrepresible cosmic disorder. Most modern death metal bands are so concerned with sounding brutal that they forget the importance of capturing the mood of utter malevolence that characterized classic albums by the likes of Morbid Angel (of whom Rutan is a former member) or Demigod, but Hate Eternal tap into this vibe with a sound that easily balances the modern with the primeval.
Rutan has finally achieved the pinnacle of his creative vision with Fury and Flames, as the album is easily the most fully realized manifestation of Hate Eternal to date. While so many bands in the genre continue to tread water creatively, Hate Eternal has truly conquered the throne of death metal.
| Reviewer: Josh Haun Added: February 25th 2008 |
|
