Thursday, January 26, 2017

EP Review: HATE UNBOUND Plague

HATE UNBOUND
Plague
Inverse Records
Detroit, Michigan's Hate Unbound describe themselves as the sonic equivalent of a booze fueled fist fight among friends with a passion for heavy metal. Their work consists of heavy songs under the death/thrash genre with a range of influences varying from Death to Lamb of God. Stylistically, the listener realizes the sound is much closer to Hatebreed and Lamb of God. What sets this band apart is they deliver with more focused vocals and lead breaks influenced by Death. Production wise, this album is quite good with all parts discernible but not over-produced. Quite a good album which will take a few listens to sufficiently enjoy. The opening track “Baptized in Lies” is a great representation of the band’s sound. “Cut” unfortunately is a much weaker track with too many breakdowns and a sound which is choppy. In saying that, it would no doubt be a crowd pleaser for fans of the post 1999 thrash genre. “Suffering” gets things back on track with a homage to Death’s Symbolic album in the opening riff. There is some very clever bass playing on this release and that is the standout moment. The real letdown aside from one dimensional vocals is most of the songs on this album have the same compositional structure. This is a band with good ideas, they just need to develop their own original sound. A 10-track album may be considered long although most songs are under the 3:30 mark. “Soiled” is a standout of the offering while “I, Matryr” is straight from the deathcore genre. Plague is released February 17th 2017 via Inverse Records. -Simon Brown

Track list:
1. Baptized in Lies
2. Cut
3. Suffering
4. Burn Your Idols
5. Soiled

1 comment:

  1. Awesome. Thanks for the review. It is much appreciated.

    FYI - Plague is a full 10 song album by the way. If you scroll down in the press kit songs, you'll see the other 5 songs. :)

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