May 2022 Feature Release – The Horde Edition

So just like that we find that a new month is upon us which of course means that we’ll be nominating a brand new monthly feature release for each clan. This essentially means that we’re asking you to rate, review & discuss our chosen features for no other reason than because we enjoy the process & banter. We’re really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on our chosen releases so don’t be shy.

This month’s feature release for The Horde has been nominated by myself. It's 2010's seventh album from Polish death metallers Hate entitled "Erebos". This record is one of the more underrated releases you'll find as it well & truly slipped under most extreme metal fans radars but I've gotta be honest.... I found this to be an absolute beast of a death metal album at the time of release & Ben felt fairly similarly once I brought it his attention. I've been hanging out for a revisit for some time now so are really looking forward to indulging in it this month.

https://metal.academy/releases/9382

OK so this is simply a superb death metal record & one of the great undiscovered gems you'll experience as a death metal fan. I originally rated it a 5/5 at the time of release. I've backed that off a bit to a 4.5/5 but that's hardly a negative. The production & musicianship are wonderful. The drummer is utterly brilliant & produces one of the tightest examples of extreme metal drumming I can think of, particularly his sublime blast beats. The vocals are aggressive as fuck & suit the atmosphere to perfection. Sure, it sounds a hell of a lot like Behemoth but "The Satanist" has absolutely nothing on this record. It's on another level altogether. This release averages 3.22 from 208 ratings on RYM. Pfft! What the fuck would they know. It's an absolute stormer in my opinion & resides comfortably in my Hall of Metal Glory as nothing short of a death metal classic.

4.5/5

Safe to say that I am not as enamoured with this release as Daniel.  Whilst by no means a bad album it is very much reminiscent of everything else I hear on the Polish death metal scene.  Whether it is the more blackened acts or more traditional bands like Vader, I just find it all a bit "meh" as a scene.  Those vocals might as well be Nergal doing them for me and although I would not imply it to be a conscious effort there does appear to be some elements of Behemoth worship here.  

The drummer's performance is outstanding though and he easily takes the award for the most impressive work here.  The production job seems to stifle the guitars for me and that urgent, stabbing tone to the riffs just does not come over well as a result.  At times I find songs blur into one another and I am not sure where one has finished and another started unless I pay track by track attention and there's not enough going on here to keep me interested in that level of detail.

The Satanist reference is a good one, but without the theatricals this album just doesn't bite the same as their counterparts finest hour (in my book at least) from 2014.  A solid three for me, not awful but not earth-shattering at the same time and probably unlikely to be revisited.

3/5

I'm no expert on the Polish death metal scene and I'm not sure if it has a sound all of it's own, but I am quite well-disposed to both Vader and Behemoth without being an out-and-out fanboy and I hear a lot of similarity to both bands here. There's the same dense guitar tone and faintly militaristic rhythms and the vocals are very similar to both Nergal and Piotr Wiwczarek. It looks like the careers of all three bands run adjacently so I don't suppose that there is any plagiarism involved they have just developed similar styles within a common scene. I think I probably sit on the fence a bit with this one, I do like it quite a bit, but after four or five listens it hasn't really got it's hooks into me like The Satanist or Back to the Blind did and whilst it's great while it's on, after it's over I have trouble recalling any of the songs in much detail and they certainly aren't running through my backbrain for half the day. As we have established previously, I still have much to learn about death metal and the band do sound incredibly accomplished to me, it's just that the tracks don't have that memorability to drag me back for repeated listens.

3.5/5