I have it on good authority from some Minnesota pals, that Hate Beast are a well respected, rising band on the Minneapolis scene. And I have no issue with that intel, but if I’m being honest Hate Beast are not doing a lot for me.

First off, if you are called Hate Beast, I expect something hateful or beastly. Hate Beast is neither. They play (competently, I might add) a form of burly metalcore/thrash/groove/American metal that was popular in the late 90s/ early 00s. Its not unlike Unearth, God Forbid, later Hatebreed, Sylosis, Lamb of God, Shadows Fall etc. It’s fine for what it is, and I probably would have dug this back then.

Second off, at 52 minutes, the album is to dang long for the style. Especially if the album is just kind of ‘there’. The 1 intro and 10 songs range from 4 to 8 minutes long. They have a nice crunchy, chunky guitar tone, a standard array of growls , rasps and a few not so great clean vocals, and it’s all done with an energy and competence I can appreciate, but there is nothing substantial to recall or want to listen to again.

There is a standard mix of bruisers like the opener “Vulture Committee”, “Amba’s Arrow”, “Goldberg’s Crown” and closer “IDÆTY”” and some slower longer tracks like “Dead Weight” and “Traitor’s Bane”, which are a little more intriguing. There is also the staple of the genre, the mid album acoustic (“Hope Diminished”). All of it stuck in a time machine set to the glory years of the American metal blow up of a decade or so ago.

I don’t hate the album, but its about 10 years too late, but even back then it may have been washed under the saturation of the genre by tons of other OK bands doing the same thing- trust me, I reviewed a ton of them.

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