So much has changed with Hate Eternal since the release of their last studio effort, I, Monarch, three short years ago. Gone are drummer Derek Roddy and bassist Randy Piro, replaced with ex-The Plasma Rifle drummer Jade Simonetto and Hate Eternal founding member and longtime Cannibal Corpse bassist Alex Webster. The line-up is once again a quartet with the addition of Rutan’s other former bandmate Shaune Kelley from Ripping Corpse. Not only that but the band has parted ways with Earache Records and signed a new deal with Metal Blade Records.

With a line-up overflowing with talented musicians you’d expect the music they created would be genre-altering, world-destroying brilliance, unfortunately, Fury and Flames is plagued with the same issues that made I, Monarch and King of All Kings unlistenable wastes of plastic. The material contained within Fury and Flames‘ 10 tracks is blisteringly fast, technical beyond all belief and… fucking boring to listen to. It’s like sitting next to a rock tumbler and listening to the rumbling of rocks bouncing off of each other over and over for 40 minutes.

The production is bad and you can’t really distinguish instruments from each other and everything just laps on top of each other, so rather than sounding like an amazing piece of technical death metal, it sounds a lot more like Last Days of Humanity‘s Putrefaction in Progress. You can’t tell where one song ends and the other begins because it’s just a wall of blasting, shredding noise.

The song writing sucks, it’s like listening to technical jazz, sure it’s impressive, but it’s annoying to listen to and honestly who gives a fuck? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; the only Hate Eternal album worth owning is Conquering the Throne, everything recorded since is just technical masturbation done for the sake of being fast and technical.

Fury and Flames is the third Hate Eternal disc that just isn’t worth the plastic it’s packaged in. If you liked the band’s other albums, you both have terrible taste in music and will also probably love this. If you don’t smoke crack and inject yourself with heroin using dirty needles then you’ll probably hate this as much as I do. Why musicians with this much talent waste it on writing music this shitty is beyond me.

Review byTeufel