The first I’d heard this band was a few years ago after coming across the review of their demo in ‘97 in an issue of Pit Magazine (I just got the mag for the free CD… which sucked, I might add), which at the time consisted of vocalist/guitarist Erik Rutan (Morbid Angel, ex-Ripping Corpse), Cannibal Corpse bassist Alex Webster and Tim Yeung on drums. The demo was only 3 tracks, but was incredibly technical and blazingly fast and showed a great deal of promise. Two years later the band, minus Alex Webster, signed to Earache subsidiary Wicked World. They recruited Doug Cerrito shortly after the demise of Suffocation and together along with Yeung and bassist Jared Anderson wrote and recorded what became Conquering The Throne. The first time I heard the full album was in Chicago in March while hanging out with Abbas. We listened to it one day while driving to the store. I just remember that he was looking for Easter chocolate for a friend of his, and boxes… all I really remember is he and I walking around the store and I kept death gurgling while little old ladies walked past and he kept laughing commenting on how amazing I am. Anyway… I just remember he and I sitting in the truck listening to the album and I was feeling kinda bored, then all of a sudden I heard that Cerrito sound and immediately started thrashing. I’m surprised Abbas and I didn’t crash we thrashed so hard… well, no, he didn’t actually thrash while he drove, but we both definitely felt like thrashing. After hearing the Cerrito tracks I knew I MUST own the album. Contrary to popular belief, the three tracks written by Cerrito were not leftover tracks from Suffocation, they were written specifically for the Hate Eternal project. Conquering The Throne consists of 11 tracks, two of which, "Sacrilege Of Hate" and "Saturated In Dejection" were from the band’s 1999 promo, only "Messiah Of Rage" was not re-recorded for the release. The album also contains the three Cerrito tracks I’d mentioned earlier, "Nailed To Obscurity", "Dethroned" and "Spiritual Holocaust". The Cerrito tracks are pure Suffocation fare, just the kind of music that makes you feel like you’re being beaten to death, only you’re laying there taking the pummelling of a life time and loving every second of it. The Rutan tracks are basically a mix between his work on Morbid Angel’s Dominion and his work in Ripping Corpse, just pure ridiculous technicality. Unfortunately for the most part Rutan’s tracks come up short and pale greatly in comparison to the Cerrito-written tracks. His song writing reminds me a lot of the music on Deeds Of Flesh’s Inbreeding The Anthropophagi in that while it’s incredibly technical and fast and pummelling, it does tend to lack greatly in the rhythm area. The drumming of Tim Yeung is simply ridiculous; his drum triggers start during the first second of the album and don’t stop until the last beat at the end. Of course he’s one of the few drummers I’ve ever heard who can pull this off without it sounding stupid, he adds so much to the overall sound with his unique techniques that he takes the music to an entirely new level. The bass is pretty hard to hear in the mix with the trigger-blast and guitars taking up most of the overall sound, but Jared is more than up to the task of keeping up with Yeung, Cerrito and Rutan. The vocals, performed by Rutan, are similar to the style used in Ripping Corpse, however on the Cerrito tracks I swear he sounds almost exactly like Frank Mullen most of the time. This album is a MUST BUY for the Cerrito tracks alone, however "Catacombs" and "By His Own Decree" more than hold their own. If you loved Inbreeding The Anthropophagi, Dominion and/or Despise The Sun then you should definitely get Conquering The Throne. Even if you don’t like any of these discs get this album anyway so you can learn how real death fucking metal should be played. Not the greatest album ever, but a damn solid one at least.

Written By: Teufel