1. Tear It Down
2. Straight To Your Face
3. Facing What Consumes You
4. Live For This
5. Doomsayer
6. Another Day, Another Vendetta
7. A Lesson Lived Is A Lesson Learned
8. Beholder Of Justice
9. This Is Now
10. Voice Of Contention
11. Choose Or Be Chosen
12. Confide In No One

Jamey Jasta - vox Sean Martin - guitar Chris Beattie - bass Matt Byrne - drums

After the great success of their major label debut album “Perseverance”, HATEBREED come out a year later with “The Rise of Brutality”. If, with this new album, you were looking for some changes in their style you’ll be disappointed, cause HATEBREED don’t come to any kind of compromise, and “The rise of brutality” keeps on with their typical style: a mix of old school hardcore and extreme metal. As it’s written in the booklet, their source of inspiration are bands such as AGNOSTIC FRONT, SICK OF IT ALL and MADBALL, but HATEBREED take the music of those bands to the highest level of aggression, and in their songs you can clearly hear reminescences of metal bands like SLAYER (the two bands toured a lot together and Kerry King plays in the track “Final prayer” from “Perseverance”), PANTERA and SEPULTURA.

The name of the album says it all: every song is intense, aggressive and brutal, with Jamey Jasta’s voice more powerful then ever (do you remember Max Cavalera?), the strong guitar riffs, the heavy bass lines and the double kicking drums, and after only 32 minutes this album makes you begging for mercy; even if every track sounds good, and the album must be heard in it’s wholeness to really understand it’s devastating fury , my favourite ones are “Facing what consumes you” (i can easily imagine what happens in the mosh pit while this song is played live), “Live for this” (the most hardcore style song in the album) and “This is now” (great song with amazing lyrics) .

A special mention goes to the lyrics: not exactly poetic, but in a pure hardcore style; title songs such as “Straight To Your Face”, “Another Day, Another Vendetta”, “A Lesson Lived Is A Lesson Learned”, and “Confide In No One” live no room for imagination.

You could criticize them for some lack of variety in their songs, or because there’s no alternation between growls and melodic voice, or other things like that, but the fact is that HATEBREED is, at the moment, along with CHIMAIRA and SUPERJOINT RITUAL, the best and the more succesful extreme band in the new alternative American scene.

Are you ready to face the new HATEBREED crashing bones attack?

rating: 7.5/10

 

Alberto Scremin