Hate Eternal - Fury & Flames (2008)

Fury & Flames is about the time I fell out of interest in Erik Rutan's workings, because it's nothing more than a retread of the grounds he had covered with the first three albums, each of which offered a functional but diminishing foray into the growing constraints of his imagination. Most of the features here are identifiable trademarks of that post-Morbid Angel. It's fast and brutal as fuck, a clamor that unfortunately, like so many of the band's peers, is often to the album's detriment. The band does toil with some versatility, as upon I, Monarch, but outside of the zippy leads and the cool outro ("Coronach"), there's painfully little that clings to the ear. A race to the end zone that is simply not engaging enough not to change the channel.

Derek Roddy was replaced by a youngster with just as much energy (Jade Simonetto), and in fact the drums are quite loud in the mix, lancing a hyperactive and resonant thunder below the stream of Rutan's powerhouse, unmemorable guitars. No worries there, but despite the excess of energy, it's not a saving grace. Randy Piro had parted with the band, and Jared Anderson sadly passed away in 2006, so Rutan brought in Alex Webster of Cannibal Corpse to handle the bass. His lines are certainly impressive from a technical standpoint, as they tend to be, and I often found the guitars so dull that I would turn to Webster to perk my interest, but its like trying to douse a bland meal of cold spaghetti with sauce well past its expiration date. The lyrics cook up that same pseudo occultism prevalent in the death metal genre, usually from the first person perspective and relevant to whatever faux rites of individualism the band is attempting to convey.

As for individual tracks, it's a bit difficult to distinguish much from the teeming, roiling mass of belligerence that populates much of the 40 minute playtime. The first 4-5 tracks tunnel past the listener at an insane pace, but outside of a few of the frenzied thrashing patterns in the midst of "When Gods May Destroy", there's nothing worth revisiting. "Proclamation of the Damned" and "The Funerary March" have some tense, tactile rhythms tucked into their battering, but they never travel anywhere interesting, and the entire album is laden in what must be the most monotonous vocal performance Rutan has yet committed to disc. It's the same shtick he'd been bellowing out since Conquering the Throne, only as time progresses, the percussive meter of the grunting has grown sour and old. The ability of the Hate Eternal musicians is never in question, because the three of them could rival anyone else in the field, but they seem to be writing the death metal equivalent of a train wreck: once it goes off the tracks, crushes a few passengers and gets cleaned up, its likely to be permanently retired.

Verdict: Indifference [6/10] (such horrors envelop us)

http://www.hateeternal.com/

Hate Eternal - I, Monarch (2005)

Not sure what the obsession with 'royalty' is among Hate Eternal's album titles (Conquering the Throne, King of All Kings, and now this), but it probably has something to do with the pseudo-Satanic menace and majesty Rutan is attempting to exude through the lyrics and music. A new John Milton, born of a ripping corpse? This time the concept is joined to a rather abstract cover. Clearly not as cool as those of the first two albums, but at least an interesting aesthetic abstraction from what most people were likely expecting. Musically, I, Monarch does not fall far from the sophomore King of All Kings, intense and discordant where it requires, dynamic and forceful, but perhaps not quite so heavy overall.

At this point, the issue with Hate Eternal is that the band's adherence to becoming the newly defined Morbid Angel of the 21st century is like a tsunami without an unsuspecting port to destroy. Rutan and Derrick Roddy whip up a veritable storm of calamity here, with incessant blasting and so much double bass that it becomes a rather moot point: such a brick wall that it hinges on the listener's exhaustion. Thus, in diametric opposition, I find my ears listening for anything that diverges from this formulaic ferocity. I turn straight towards the lead sequences of "To Know Our Enemies" or "Behold Judas", which weave appropriate malevolence into the aggregate jock escalation of the drums. I bathe in the wonderful escape of instrumental finale "Faceless One", in which the duo and bassist Randy Piro exhibit enormous skill at something more musical than you will find elsewhere on this album: a whirlpool of delirious percussion and coiling riffs that cede into scatterbrained fusion leads and thrashing.

But this is not to say that the thrusted excess is necessarily unwelcome, because tunes like "Path to the Eternal Gods" or "The Plague of Humanity" are well adapted to their chosen trail of destruction. Brutal bricks of contaminated concrete, urine, feces and flies being flung at the audience in dizzying waves, each with a stupefying muscular definition. I, Monarch takes a lot out of you, and the fact that the production is a dash more wholesome and contemporary than the more stringy ablutions of King of All Kings is not a crippling factor. However, it does suffer from that pervasive 'more of the same' syndrome that so often lurks in the rafters of the more extreme death metal reaches. Rutan and Roddy seem so intent on flattening all the opposition that they don't quite realize what great songs they might be capable of if they were to slow it down a notch and evoke the surreal menace that the cover image seems to hint towards. This is still a good album, but less impressive than the first two trips to the edge.

Verdict: Win [7/10] (master of what shall be)

http://www.hateeternal.com/

Hate Eternal - King of All Kings (2002)

As strong as the case might be made that Hate Eternal are naught more than a Morbid Angel derivative featuring a member of that very same act, their Conquering the Throne debut was nonetheless the most exciting new career flagship since the late 80s and early 90s, when the 'core' Florida bands were writing their most potent and lasting materials. Three years later, with an adjusted lineup, Erik Rutan would return with the follow-up, King of All Kings, sporting an Andreas Marschall cover redolent of Blind Guardian's Nightfall in Middle-Earth, production by Rutan himself, and a boast that little to no editing was done during its creation in the studio. The sophomore is a tense, explosive manifestation which follows rather closely in the footsteps of its predecessor, while upping the level of sheer speed and discord woven through the puerile battery.

This is one intense overdose, and the band takes full advantage of percussion mercenary Derek Roddy, who replaces Tim Yeung. King of All Kings is surely one of Roddy's most unrelenting performances, securing his position as an unflinching hired gun across the wide spectrum of extreme metal, shredding out fills nearly as often as Rutan. And speaking of the ex-Ripping Corpse, Morbid Angel speedster, the burden of riffing falls entirely on his shoulders this time out, since Cerrito had also left the band. The result is a mild lack of the preceding album's firm and Faustian structure, replaced by the weaving of entropic threads below Erik's zipping octave rhythms and blustered, processed lead work. It's a fucking tumult, which often suffers from lack of distinction between tracks, but a few of the tracks like "Servants of the Gods" and "In Spirit (The Power of Mana)" show a surprising strength of musicality betwixt the admittedly flashy and ravenous bombardments of "Beyond Redemption", the staggering brutal of a "Chants in Declaration".

The admixture of velocity and taut thrashing execution was something to be feared, even if it does not always produce the most resonant and durable of riffing sequences. King of All Kings is close to an even further hyperized Fatals Formula to the Flesh, or the faster segments of the divisive 1995 Morbid Angel album Domination, and some of my enjoyment of the latter surely bled forth into my appreciation for this. The most destructive of Hate Eternal's full-lengths, if not the best written. Rutan knew his audience and his weaponry well, and brought it to full bearing on the sophomore, but there are stretches of vapid guitar flatulence and dull bludgeoned vocals that fail to overcome the consistency of the debut. Otherwise, this remains one of their strongest albums. There is much to occupy the ear, as you translate Roddy's superhuman applications and Rutan's terse magnificence into a comprehensible, despotic dialect, and surely it's a more tangible and memorable piece than several of its successors.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10] (I my dominion, my own affliction)

http://www.hateeternal.com/

Hate Eternal - Conquering the Throne (1999)

As a shambling, murderous constituent to Ripping Corpse he was a virtual unknown. As an axe wielding mercenary to Morbid Angel he had begun to build a name for himself as a talented fiend who could run alongside Trey Azagthoth in technical ability. As founder and front man for Hate Eternal, Erik Rutan had finally found his temple, performing the death metal as he always wanted to hear it: rapid, ribald and unapologetic. If most of the elements raped upon this debut seem ‘familiar’ to Rutan’s better known alma mater, then perhaps it could be forgiven. He took the accelerated side of Morbid Angel, slathered in brutal vocals akin to David Vincent, George Fisher and Steve Tucker, and peppered his spry lead sensibilities and beloved abuse of deep sliding octave chords to the resulting mass of affliction: Conquering the Throne, a head spinning triumph that makes Formulas Fatal to the Flesh seem more like baby formula.

There is simply no release from the blasting, churning momentum Rutan had drafted on his diabolical desk. To complete this ritual, he hired on some of the best in the business: relentless skingrinder Tim Yeung, Suffocation guitarist/alumni Doug Cerrito, and the late Jared Anderson on bass (who also performed a brief stint with Morbid Angel after the turn of the century). Rutan produced the album himself, and did a rather smashing job of it, with immense punctuation to the guitar tone and vocals, beneath which Yeung propels himself like a swarm of abyssal hornets. Conquering the Throne is one of those rare albums that succeed despite a lack of variation in their jerking, wretched intent. You might damn well consider this a 33 minute ululating omni-song chopped up with a cleaver into inoffensive 2-3 minute segments that each pack a comparable, lethal dose of flailing insanity.

As such, it’s a challenge to select individual favorites. I’d recommend just pummeling on through the whole lot, from the muscular showcase “Praise of the Almighty” to the well of frenetic malpractice that is “Saturated in Dejection”. There’s not much slowdown, the closest might be the curving malevolence of “By His Own Decree” or the bewildering juggernaut that is “Darkness by Oath”, and each of the tracks is kept incredibly busy with a large number of riffs, wailing and efficient leads, and drums that will have you selling your own kit on eBay in no time, since you know you will never play that good. As far as the faceless, unwashed USDM hordes are typically concerned, Hate Eternal is the whole package, a storm of unsubtle atrocities that hammer the audience into rapt submission.

Perfect? Decidedly not, but as far as answering any question that Rutan could strike out on his own, it’s a rousing success. I’ve already mentioned that the songs do lack some individual charisma, and the acrobatic fluency of the guitars very often breed little more than patterns familiar to Morbid Angel or Suffocation, only splayed out at ridiculous speeds. The lyrics follow that same egoist/occultist tradition, heavily centered on theology, that bands like Deicide and Morbid Angel had explored previously. For the ADD addled loud and proud only crowd, this is a sheer paradise of punishment. For the rest of us, we might make an exception to the general indifference towards faceless brutality for an album so finely chiseled to knock our blocks clean into the next century.

Verdict: Win [8.25/10]

http://www.hateeternal.com/

Hate Eternal - Phoenix Amongst the Ashes (2011)

While Hate Eternal's fifth album does not necessarily manifest the titular creature as far as its glorious qualities, it is undoubtedly the strongest album Erik Rutan has released through this outlet since the 1999 debut, Conquering the Throne. Retaining the services of Jade Simonetto's intense drumming ability, adding former Monstrosity axegrinder J.J. Hrubovcak to the bass position, he's assembled a formidable lineup capable of nearly anything within the brutal death spectrum. Overall, the level of competence is staggering, and Rutan continues to write in his post-Morbid Angel vein: predictable yet destructive blasting hurricanes of straight death interlaced with intricate, blockbusting grooves and just enough melody to keep the listener's ear affixed beyond merely the thundering catechism expected.

Phoenix Amongst the Ashes is an album of splatter and dynamics, and while its almost incessant in terms of the exhausting level of blasting and double bass, the riffs range a little broader than its predecessor Fury & Flames. "Haunting Abound" is like feeding industrial strength Voivod dissonance through a Morbid Angel meat grinder, while "Hatesworn" feels like an outtake from Domination, all tremendous grooving curvature and cranial numbing footwork from Simonetto that makes one question the guy's humanity. Faster fare like the title track has a dense layer of fibrous melody, subordinate to the tireless slaughter of the rhythm section, and "The Art of Redemption" will spin heads through its clinical, spiraling storm of higher end notation. I was also absorbed into the counter grooves and chaos of "Lake Ablaze", and the opening one two volley of "The Eternal Ruler" and "Thorns of Acacia" is vicious enough to get most of the naysayers back on board that negative reactions to the prior pair of efforts.

Truly, this is about as intense as the human form can perform in this genre without their bone structure dissembling, but there are still some drawbacks. For one, the vocals are never quite interesting. Rutan is heaving out the same Benton/Vincent-like gruffness he has clocked in since 1999, offset by some cheesy and forgettable snarls. Neither voice possesses the malevolent charisma or resonance to adequately mirror the whirlwind compositional ability. For another, despite the obvious creativity the trio have expressed here, there are still passages of banal aggression, with less interesting riffs, that feel almost as if they're just inserted to fill up space and give Simonetto an extended workout. All told though, the excellent production of the album and the relentless ability of the musicians involved make Phoenix enough of a success that the band can once again be considered a contender for the hostile, vacant throne of Floridian obliteration.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10]

http://www.hateeternal.com/