HATE ETERNAL - Fury and Flames CD
METAL BLADE RECORDS
You have to give Erik Rutan (guitarist/vocalist) alot of credit and respect for all that he's gone through over the years just trying to keep this band alive. Since he started HATE ETERNAL as a side project from his work in MORBID ANGEL back in the late 90s. (He would later leave them in 2002 to perform in HATE ETERNAL full time.) The man has watched a revolving door of line-up changes and even the loss of his friend and bandmate, Jared Anderson, who passed away in 2006 at the age of 30. And still with all that turmoil he continued to produce three well received and successful releases. On "Fury and Flames",their fourth release, Rutan returns with a whole new HATE ETERNAL line-up which includes bassist Alex Webster from CANNIBAL CORPSE and newcomers Shaune Kelly as second guitarist and Jade Stimonette on drums.
After listening to this I can easily say that "Fury and Flames" is Rutan's way of resolving some personal issues. Hey why pay a psychiatrist to talk to when all you really need is to enter a recording studio and vent your inner demons through music. Besides the couch might have erupted into flames once Rutan laid on it. This is most evident on songs like “Proclamation Of The Damned” and “Fury Within" in which HATE ETERNAL is like a volcanic eruption of Death/Grind destruction. I'm just talking musically now. If you factor in Rutan's vocals then it's as if he's exorcising demons from over a hundred past lives. In other words, he's pissed! Although he does show some humanity on "The Funeral March". By the way this release is dedicated to Jared Anderson.
If pain and suffering makes you stronger and this is HATE ETERNAL's strongest release to date. What kind of earthly hell will Erik Rutan have to endure next in order to surpass this beast of a release? There's a cut on here titled "Bringer of Storms" which to me is a precursor of future events. And it's strange how a song can bring back a distant memory from the past. During my second summer in Alaska, the summer of 85, I was at the top of a mountain with some friends (OK it was a smaller mountain since we did drive the four-wheeler up a dirt road). We all were looking off in the direction of the valley we had just crossed. And we could see this rain storm coming at us. It was erie since we were the same exact height of the storm clouds. The valley below was being drenched and then the clouds reached us. We didn't get rained on as bad since we were standing in the clouds. But I'll never forget that storm coming towards us. I remember one of my friends saying afterwards that there should've been some music playing when that happened. I now know what song should've been.
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