It’s kind of hard to be a death metal band in the 21^st century. You know you want to play something that is heavy, brutal and has growling in it. The question is, how brutal do you want to be? How technical should you play? Should you be more experimental and throw in some saxophone? If you’re true to death metal, you’ll stick with what you know works and that is just about any American (plus a few standouts from across the globe) death metal band from 1987 to 1993. For a lot people, that is the pinnacle of death metal. For Kill with Hate, that is definitely a prime era to pull influence from.

Listening to Voices of Obliteration – the full length debut from this Hungarian act – is like stepping into a time machine. There really isn’t a single band to peg all the influence, as you’ll hear stuff from Immolation, Sinister, Malevolent Creation, and country-mates Extreme Deformity (which Kill with Hate covered on this album), as well as some newer bands like Hate Eternal, Krisiun, and post-Organic Hallucinosis era Decapitated.

With a typical sample introduction (which has something to do with religion and how terrible it is) Voices of Obliteration kicks things off with “Submersion”. Straight away you can hear Immolation and Hate Eternal oozing from the headphones. It’s solid riffing all the way, although I think I’d end up misremembering these songs for the aforementioned bands rather than Kill with Hate.

That’s kind of a shame as well as there are some good riffs on here such as on “The Beast Within”, “Epistle of Fire”, and “Servant of God”. While the band doesn’t show off their technical chops like other masturbatory technical death metal bands do, Kill with Hate has some chops with the leads from the aforementioned tracks and on “Imprisoned”. The Extreme Deformity cover is well done and follows the original perfectly; it’s just missing the rawness of the original song. Though I’m sure they picked that band and song because of the influence and that they’re fellow countrymen.

Even though I say that this album is like a time machine to the late-80s/early-90s, the modern production keeps it firm in the present as well as on “Doubt” where some of the riffs do sound like they would be almost at home on Sumerian Records. There isn’t any clean singing going on and the breakdowns aren’t as annoying. There’s even a bit of a funky break around the 1:40 which is quite a surprise! It shows that Kill with Hate is capable of more than just straight up death metal but it also feels a little confused. Yeah, I’m ragging on them a bit by saying that they’re stuck in the past but they take pride in their old-school roots. Rather than be hesitant with that little bit of musical exploration they should expand it further or stick strictly with death metal, which they do on every other song on the album.

If you really love old-school death metal then you might find some enjoyment out of this, but you probably won’t remember much outside of that. It’s a decent album that is unfortunately marred by the fact that there is nothing really noteworthy.

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