Hate Eternal
UPON DESOLATE SANDS
SEASON OF MIST
VETERAN EXTREMISTS REASSERT THEIR AUTHORITY IT PERHAPS DOESN’T
qualify as a spoiler to say that Upon Desolate Sands is as uncompromising as anything Hate Eternal have ever released. Armed with their punchiest and darkest production job since the seminal King Of All Kings, these songs slam home the creative and technical brilliance of the current line-up with merciless power. After opener The Violent Fury lives up to its name, What Lies Beyond floors the accelerator, reminding us why there are still few bands that come close to this level of retina-snapping intensity. Dark Age Of Ruin is gleefully warped and unrelenting, steeped in old-school eeriness and blessed with a gloriously eccentric solo from guitarist Erik Rutan.
Even at snail’s pace, this will tear the flesh from your bones. Both the grimly grandiose title track and the brooding Nothingness Of Being embrace doomier textures and a greater sense of sonic space, albeit with the omnipresent threat of that pulverising wall of noise. Throughout, Erik’s scalpel-sharp but pitch-black riffs remain distinctive and hypnotic, underpinned by a superhuman rhythm section (featuring ex-Obscura drummer Hannes Grossmann) and driven forward by a not unreasonable sense of death metal superiority. This is the sound of none-morebrutal masters at work.
FOR FANS OF: MORBID ANGEL, BEHEMOTH, CEMETERY URN
DOM LAWSON