Hate - Crusade:Zero review
| Band: | Hate |
| Album: | Crusade:Zero |
| Style: | Death metal |
| Release date: | January 25, 2015 |
| A review by: | ScreamingSteelUS |
01. Vox Dei (A Call From Beyond)
02. Lord, Make Me An Instrument Of Thy Wrath!
03. Death Liberator
04. Leviathan
05. Doomsday Celebrities
06. Hate Is The Law
07. Valley Of Darkness
08. Crusade Zero
09. The Omnipresence
10. Rise Omega The Consequence!
11. Dawn Of War
12. Black Aura Debris
13. The Reaping [bonus]
It's easy to forget about Hate. You could very easily forget that you saw them opening for Overkill, of all bands, a few years back. You could just as easily forget that you were supposed to review their new album a couple of months ago. You might even forget that they opened for Vader ten feet in front of your face two hours ago.
Hate just has this inescapable, underlying current of unremarkability. Take the name "Hate." Simple, unadorned, blunt. A basic concept vital to heavy metal, on whose energy many bands thrive. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that; everyone likes a bit of the basic blueprint bludgeoning now and then. But unless you dress it up a bit, something like a "Hate Eternal" or "The Project Hate MCMXCIX," the novelty wears off pretty quickly. Soon you forget which four-letter word to call them and wonder why they didn't make it just a little more interesting. After a demo or two, it should occur to you that naming your band "Hate" was kind of a boring thing to do.
This also describes their music perfectly. Austere, formulaic blackened death has its charms, but they sure don't last very long. That spark of life drowns in a sea of formless, bland semi-riffs and monotonous stomping without any originality. They take the most basic elements common to a lot of heavy metal - but just let them sit, without improving upon them. You don't have to reinvent the wheel and become the world's first slam gangsta nasheed turbo-folk band - but if you're going to play blackened death, at least write a few songs that sound different from the entire rest of the genre. It's so indefatigably repetitive that I'm beginning to think that I'll start hearing "ABYSS - BORN - LEVIATHAN" in my sleep now. There was already one Behemoth album last year, and even that sounded a bit too much like a lot of pre-existing Behemoth for some people's taste.
I've listened to this album four times now, maybe five. Or? maybe ten. Or 30. Hard to tell with this stuff. It's stock blackened death, good for elevators in Norwegian hotels, or if you need to soundtrack your crappy homemade horror movie with something so generic that you don't have to pay royalties. Playing the first song on repeat will give you roughly the same experience as playing through the whole thing.
Not having any good ideas isn't a death sentence in music, as we see time and time again; some bands are generic, but still pretty enjoyable. Some bands are just generic, but otherwise inoffensive. Some bands are so generic that it starts to get irritating. Hate hovers somewhere between the latter two. I seriously doubt anybody expected Crusade:Zero to be any different from Hate's previous material, but neither should you expect it to be any sort of improvement on that sound.
Rating breakdown
| Performance: | 7 |
| Songwriting: | 4 |
| Originality: | 2 |
| Production: | 7 |
 | Written on 24.03.2015 by I'm the reviewer, and that means my opinion is correct. |
Comments
Comments: 18
Visited by: 150 users
| HeavyWork Posts: 31  |
Good and correct review. Also gave me good laughs throughout. Would you agree with me that Solarflesh was a good album though?
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| ScreamingSteelUS Editor-in-Chief Admin Posts: 5923  |
Written by HeavyWork on 25.03.2015 at 07:25 Thanks. Solarflesh had some surprisingly good stuff on it. Still nothing special on any grander scale, I'd say, but not bad for what it is.
---- "Earth is small and I hate it" - Lum Invader I'm the Agent of Steel.
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| HeavyWork Posts: 31 |
You should review the new Der Weg Einer Freiheit. Favorite album of the year so far.
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| Ilham Giant robot Posts: 5161  |
Haha, cool review SweatingSackUS. I haven't listened to this one, because I knew it would be boring as fuck. Funny thing is that I haven't seen that many bands live, yet managed to see Hate twice opening for bigger bands, a few years apart. Ended up drinking during their set to kill the boredom, twice.
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| flightoficarus Stamp Tramp Posts: 1116  |
This speaks the truth.
---- Daily underground metal recommendations at Metal Trenches. Watch metal content on the Metal Trenches YouTube Channel.
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| Malignar Posts: 285 |
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| ScreamingSteelUS Editor-in-Chief Admin Posts: 5923 |
Written by Ilham on 25.03.2015 at 12:18 Thank you, .......Killham. There's only so much I can do with your name.
---- "Earth is small and I hate it" - Lum Invader I'm the Agent of Steel.
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| Ilham Giant robot Posts: 5161 |
Written by ScreamingSteelUS on 25.03.2015 at 19:14 I know, I just keep finding new ones for you and feel bad afterwards because I know you'll try to make one up for me as well. I'm so sorry.
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| ScreamingSteelUS Editor-in-Chief Admin Posts: 5923 |
Written by Ilham on 25.03.2015 at 19:20 You should change your name to "Jen" or something. I've got plenty for that one.
---- "Earth is small and I hate it" - Lum Invader I'm the Agent of Steel.
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| Ilham Giant robot Posts: 5161 |
Written by ScreamingSteelUS on 25.03.2015 at 19:22 Okay, show me. So sorry for the off-topic, just answer this and I leave your - good and deserving of more attention than this - review alone.
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| Electes Posts: 159 |
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| ScreamingSteelUS Editor-in-Chief Admin Posts: 5923 |
Written by Electes on 26.03.2015 at 22:32 I felt so as well, but at the same time, when a band is as generic as Hate the two become at least somewhat one and the same. I could definitely stand to have included more album-specific detail, but it genuinely sounded like one long song just droning in my head and the words weren't coming.
---- "Earth is small and I hate it" - Lum Invader I'm the Agent of Steel.
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| Electes Posts: 159 |
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| Marcel Hubregtse Grumpy Old Fuck Elite Posts: 40071  |
Written by deadone on 28.03.2015 at 03:11 Yep, all of their albums are generic and unremarkable.
---- Member of the true crusade against European Flower Metal Yesterday is dead and gone, tomorrow is out of sight Dawn Crosby (r.i.p.) 05.04.1963 - 15.12.1996 
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| Electes Posts: 159 |
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| Marcel Hubregtse Grumpy Old Fuck Elite Posts: 40071 |
Written by Electes on 29.03.2015 at 00:59 No, loads of death metal albums are original and interesting. None of Hate's work qualifies for that.
---- Member of the true crusade against European Flower Metal Yesterday is dead and gone, tomorrow is out of sight Dawn Crosby (r.i.p.) 05.04.1963 - 15.12.1996
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| PocketMetal Posts: 750 |
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| Electes Posts: 159 |
Written by PocketMetal on 06.04.2015 at 23:23 I forgot to say that originality's relevance depends upon whether it's good or not as well,  Portal...:lol: 
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