My first exposure to Hate Eternal came during the first half of high school. Me and my friend Jimmy were exchanging death metal CD's for Christmas - I gave him Deicide's Legion and he got me Suffocation's Effigy of the Forgotten. I think I gave him a second CD as well. I had also planned to give him the newest release by Hate Eternal, King of All Kings. But once I realized that the exchange would be uneven, I jettisoned the Christmas spirit and kept it for myself. Despite only sort of liking the album, when I, Monarch came out I impulsively bought it as well. Although I thought that the guitar work was relatively interesting, the constant blast beats throughout both CD's eventually convinced me that it was boring one-dimensional music, and I sold them off a few years back.
In retrospect, I think my previous opposition to the blasting style of the albums was a little dogmatic. For sure, it's not the type of thing you want to listen to all the time. But in my high school frame of mind, the adoption of blastbeats throughout an entire album was an indication that the band lacked creativity. These days I'm a lot more sympathetic to singularity of vision.
It may seem like a strange comparison to make, but I'm reminded of my first exposure to John Cage's music, which came in the form of the piano collection "In a Landscape" which I bought last fall. Much of the album consists of repetitive piano lines which are simplistic to the point of sounding amateurish or childlike. At first it was easy to see Cage as a cynical opportunist in an "Emperor's New Clothes" scenario, but I soon came to appreciate the stubborn commitment to simple, elemental melodies. To force the listener to reevaluate musical dictums, It takes a musician with a single-minded focus and a willingness to offend our sensibilities.
I guess that's a really pretentious way to say that I love blastbeats and I can listen to them for 40 minutes straight.
In all seriousness, the adoption of the blastbeat as the primary rhythmic backbone is a natural progression for extreme metal, and it's something that happened a lot sooner in black metal because of the de-emphasis on rhythm and the ability to treat the blasting drums as an atmospheric element. But in death metal, I don't think there's anyone who competently explored the idea until Erik Rutan. Revisiting I, Monarch with this perspective, I can finally appreciate the layering of Derek Roddy's steady blasting with delicate cymbal work as a musical subversion of positive and negative space.
That said, on Fury and Flames, newcomer Jade Simonetto's playing is somewhat more varied than Roddy's anyway. But along with the dense layering of three or more guitar tracks at once, the album becomes nothing short of a wall of sound. Apparently it has received criticism in the metal world for that very reason, but in my view such an aesthetic is completely in keeping with the tenants of death metal. Close listening reveals rich compositions with polyphonic guitar and bass lines, and an ear for melody and dissonance which has always characterized Rutan's work. But on the whole it's aggressive and nearly impenetrable by design.
The relentless technicality, oppressive atmosphere, and general disdain for subtlety and restraint make Hate Eternal unquestionably a band of the 2000's. Particularly in the drumming category, the music-as-athletics approach simply didn't exist in the old school days. But despite all of this, Rutan's playing and writing style retains a connection to traditional death metal that many modern bands don't. I think the thrash leanings of Rutan's early career in Ripping Corpse are still with the band to an extent. While percussive rhythms and intentionally amelodic note choice dominate much of the material from bands like Origin and Nile, Rutan's riffs seem largely informed by his unique melodic inclinations.
On a more aesthetic level, I'm a huge fan of the sound on this album. For one thing, Fury and Flames has one of the most prominent bass sounds I've heard on a death metal album. Although it apparently goes against common practice, sacrificing a little bulk in the guitar tone to give more presence to the bass adds a whole level of sonic depth in my view. That's a big part of a reason why I'm such a big fan of the early Cryptopsy albums. In addition, the guitar tone may not be as sharp and punchy as is typical, but it gives an almost doomy flavor to a lot of the low register, backing guitar lines.
For such an unrelentingly dense album, the songs are impressively diverse. There's the melodic thrashing of "Whom Gods May Destroy:", the dissonant trudging of "Fury Within", or the staccato rhythms of "Thus Salvation". The emotionally tinged playing of "Tombeau (Le Tombeau de la Fureur et des Flammes)" is particularly noteworthy - Rutan's tribute to a deceased bandmate and friend displays a vulnerability rarely heard in this genre.
In short, I'm completely blown away by this album and it's driven me to re-purchase those two Hate Eternal albums that I discarded a few years back. I was always attracted to Rutan's guitar work, but I've finally warmed up to his challenging and dense take on the genre as a whole. It's risky to make broad statements after owning an album for a week, but I feel fairly certain that Fury and Flames has joined the ranks of my favorite post-2000 metal albums.
