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Hate: Solarflesh
26/02/13 || Smalley
Finally, at the ass-end of January, I find a 2013 metal record actually worth reviewing! Granted, not only had I never heard anything from Hate before 2013, but I’d never even heard of them, but lack of experience with bands never stopped me from reviewing their new shit before, after all (as all of you well know by now, hah). And, if you’re a fan of the extreme metals, how the fuck could you not check out a record named fucken “Solarflesh” by a band fucken named Hate, with such evil, badass artwork like that?? Doesn’t get much more metal than that, am I right? Besides, I saw a ton of pre-release hype for this in the underground(?) community online, and the music lived up to my expectations pretty well, so here I am to help get the post-release buzz started for “Solarflesh”, and the rock-solid death metal contained within.
The first thing that struck me about this album is, although it really can’t be characterized as “experimental” overall, it still has enough of its own personality to not simply vanish into the woodwork, which counts for a lot in a work in such an oversaturated sub-genre such as DM; “Solarflesh” kicks off with the dramatic, atmospherically ominous album intro “Watchful eye of doom”, which juggles various orchestral instruments, insistently heavy, ritualistic percussion, an evil-sounding woman intoning in some foreign, occult-ish sounding language, and much more in one thick, massive stew of musical darkness; fucken cool.
Granted, most of the rest of the record is more standard than that, but this album still generally sounds like a genuine effort was given to make it be a bit of its own thing, like with its first real song, “Eternal might”; while some of this tune’s individual parts may come off as a bit familiar to those who are well-acquainted with death, overall, they’re pieced together in a smarter way than the majority of DM acts bother with. I mean, they stretch the intro out for a full 1:40 before even getting into any vocals, and it still stays interesting the entire time!
Not to imply the sections with vocals aren’t interesting either, as this work is epically intricate the whole way, and factor in the consistently heavy, speedy grooves, the skilled riffing/solos, the strong, uniquely hardcore-tinged growling courtesy of frontman Adam, that fucken incredible double bass hummingbird-ing by drummer Hexen, and the uniquely slick-but-still-pleasing production from fellow Polish heavyweights “Heinrich & Malta” (ex-Decapitated bassist and Behemoth sound guy, respectively), and you have yourself one fucken Hell of a song here.
Erm, Hell in the uppercase, proper-name form of the word and not the usual, casual-swear one, just to show you how metal the song really is. But anyway, the rest of the album is reliably dark, violent, and intense, with catchy riffs, smart, heavy writing, and excellent performances all-around, so no major complaints for the remainder. There is one minor one, however, as “Solarflesh” is kept from full-on greatness by having just a few too many moments when the band leans more towards straightfoward-ish heaviness, instead of more experimental, surprising, or intricate moments that would’ve made this truly GREAT.
Like I said, this definitely isn’t vanilla, but I still kind of wish they had pursued recording some more out-there material here more often. I mean, I know they can already pull that stuff off well sometimes, like the doomy opening section of “Sadness will last forever”, those awesome, classically Gothenburg-y guitar melodies that close out “Timeless kingdom”, or the foreboding, Nile-like acoustic intro of the title track, and maybe they wouldn’t have even needed to add a lot more of those moments to make this one as unique as it could’ve been, just add a few more moments like that, and make the off-the-beaten-path parts already here just last a little longer, or something.
But it mostly isn’t Hate’s fault, really; if this was the first death metal record ever or something, it’d be sure to go down in history, it’s just that, coming in such a heavily saturated genre, that does affect the curve a lil’ bit, and what might have been mind-blowing otherwise is “just” almost great. But hell (regular version!), it’s not even one of those active complaints that means this album disappointed me any, just one of nit-picky, passive-aggressive ones that keeps this from being better than it already is; I mean, it already has a really good end-score down there, what more do I want from it??
Guess I gotta act spoiled to pad this review out some, or something. Anyway, maybe Hate can push themselves a little harder next time to be more unexpected, for now, I’m just happy with the ALMOST-great metal here, especially since good new releases don’t just happen every day (shit, just decent releases don’t happen everyday), so if you’re looking for unabashedly brutal DM with zero metalcore influence or any other lame crap like that, this is your fucken record. Please, don’t let me throwaway whining here stop you.
- Information
- Released: 2013
- Label: Napalm
- Website: www.hate-metal.com
- Band
- Adam The First Sinner (ugh): guitars, vocals
- Destroyer: guitars
- Mortifer: bass
- Hexen: drums
- Tracklist
- 01. Watchful Eye Of Doom
- 02. Eternal Might
- 03. Alchemy Of Blood
- 04. Timeless Kingdom
- 05. Festival Of Slaves
- 06. Sadness Will Last Forever
- 07. Solarflesh
- 08. Endless Purity
- 09. Mesmerized
