So, it’s been kind of a wild summer here at the Coffin. I
got married at the end of May; I went on my honeymoon at the start of August.
Of course I work, and the time between those great events was occupied by too
much working. The result is that I’ve done a pretty poor job of establishing
the Coffin and getting the operation running.
My
ultimate goal for this blog is to make room for a number of my personal
interests, and so far, I’ve got the action figure part down. But my biggest
love in life is, and always has been, music. The Internet has no shortage of
music blogs, but now it needs to make room for mine.
In
reality, there will be room here for a couple of different genres of music, but
for the most part things will be heavy metal or heavy metal-related. It won’t
be all new records, but it will primarily be ones that catch my interest.
So, I
guess let’s give it a try.
Hate Eternal – Infernus
This
may break some rule of blogging, if such things exist, but here’s a little
background on why this particular record has been for a few weeks now my choice
to kick off the musical component of this blog. I truly love music. I’m sort of
a music hoarder, having found in 2010 the marvels of a stable Internet
connection and various alleyways for obtaining new music without that new music
price tag. I’m sure we’ll get into all of that at some later time, but the
immediate point is that over the last few years and thanks to technology, my
music ‘collection’ has swollen to an amazing size, as I imagine is fairly
normal. Before 2010 I had a huge collection of CDs and physical music, but the
ease and convenience of digital music soon caught me. As a result, I’ve
discovered tons of great new music and, at the same time but not as a result, I’ve
lost track of certain bands I used to follow with at least a moderate interest.
Hate
Eternal is an example of the former. Eric Rutans’ death metal collective was something
that I took great notice of in 2002 when King of All Kings was released, and
that album is one that I would always recommend to people looking for a good
tech-y death metal record. At that time, I was a real big fan of Jared Andersen
as well, and then-drummer Derrick Roddy was then still a drummer of a different
stripe, unlike in the present day where Derrick Roddy has all but become a
style of drummer in death metal. Starting with their debut album Hate Eternal
was hailed as something of a super group, right there in the early 2000s when a
sticker proclaiming ‘super group’ was enough to garner a fair amount of press
in the metal scene and at the record stores. That sticker was often enough to
convince a younger me that the album attached to it was worth my money. The
winter of 2002 saw King of All Kings in steady rotation, part of the soundtrack
to wild and crazy nights.
Releases
after King of All Kings weren’t quite as interesting (or good), and my
attention to the band waned. The super group label vanished, as subsequent
iterations of the band were filled out by names you may know, but none that you
were excited by. I flat out missed Pheonix Amongst the Ashes after the real
mess that was Fury & Flames, an album that was difficult to listen to because
of a terrible production. Infernus seemed like a good chance to give the band
another chance, and I’m pretty happy that I did.
The
opening set of songs, Locust Swarm and The Stygian Deep, remind of all those
terrific things about Hate Eternal from 2002: they’re fast, and they’re intense
and chaotic. That’s a good, comfortable feeling for me with this band: the
early 2000s saw a handful of these hyper-kinetic death metal releases that gave
you that feeling of needing to grit your teeth and hold on to something for the
first song or two, trying to navigate a salvo of wildness that would eventually
subside and allow you to venture further into the music. The frantic pace of
this album continues for another track or so before the title track slows
things down and establishes a groove, one which reaches an amazing peak at
around the three minute mark, ushering in arguably the most interesting three
minutes of the entire album. It’s the kind of big shift in the span of the
record that makes the album memorable as a whole, the same way Powers that Be
came at the end of King of All Kings and presented something different from the
rest enough that you sat up and took notice of everything that lead up to it.
King of All Kings’ moment came at the end of the record; Infernus’ comes right
in the middle, and actually signals a shift for the second half of the album to
tap the brakes on the chaos and present a little more variety. The Chosen One
returns to the more breakneck pace of the opening tracks, while Zealot,
Crusader of War again slows things down, not nearly to the extent that the
title track does but more along the lines of what another early 2000s Rutan
appearance, Morbid Angel’s Gateways to Annihilation, does, before things pick back
up for the final three tracks. The changes are not enough to make anyone laud
the band as visionary, but they do offer a change of pace, and for that the
album is stronger as a whole.
Lyrically,
Hate Eternal is still on the Morbid Angel/ “Ancient Ones” track. I am a man who
does love some Satan in his metal, but it’s never a bad idea to branch out a
bit.
Production
wise this album is great, or at least great in the context of my last exposure
to the band. Fury & Flames’ muddy production was a real, real problem for
me, and I lost interest in the album fairly quickly as a result. Infernus here
is about on par with a death metal release from a fairly established band in
the year 2015; add in the fact that Rutan himself has some producing credits
and as such should know better. I don’t mind an Erik Rutan production job;
although, for better or worse, the two that pop immediately to mind are
Cannibal Corpse’s Kill and the previously mentioned Hate Eternal mess: Kill I
have no problems with.
Overall
Infernus is a good album, with enough to keep me returning to it and, maybe
most importantly, having moments where I realize that I want to listen to it again,
something that doesn’t happen as often as it used to. I feel kind of bad that I
kept referencing other albums or specifically another Hate Eternal album, but for me that’s far more of a positive in
this case than anything else. Infernus, while it keeps bringing up memories of
King of All Kings, does not make me want to run back to King of All Kings, but
rather makes me want to hit play on Infernus again. Somehow if that’s wrong, I
don’t want to be right.
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