After a 15-year pause in full-length releases, Ukrainian iconoclast by the very act of drawing breath HATE FOREST returned with 2020’s Hour Of The Centaur. Reconfigured as a solitary entity, this HATE FOREST showed no lowering of quality, still – and perhaps even more – steadfast and commanding in its commitment to be true to none but itself. Concluding what began with EPs Sowing With Salt and Justice, Against All Odds arrives.
The presence of live drums for the first time on a HATE FOREST album is announced with a turret-mounted machine gun in ‘Werewolves’. Inhuman in its sheer speed, unchanging in its lycanthropic, blood-drunk ferocity, we’re shot forth into ‘One Way Ticket’, with barely a moment between. No chance to catch a breath, futile prayers for respite unacknowledged, a mix leaving no open space for escape between the instrumental salvos, the vocal scour, yet precise in execution, uncluttered and nearly surgical in this strangely robust production.
A barbaric ‘Devil Is On Our Side’ fades into the rampant cannonade of ‘Ukrainian Thermopylae’, punchy riffwork and a cavernous vocal attack from the depths of utter Sheol fueling this near-corporeal maelstrom. ‘Mariupol’ strides forth, impressive rhythm from the drums and a sense of ambience that, instead of calming, bristles with a berserker rage, uncontainable and intent on damage.
Penultimate punisher ‘The Reaping Hand’ hides a menacing melodiousness in its coda, and the 6:28 of ‘Courage’ does exactly what a final track should do by combining the finest elements of all that’s come before, and adding a primal rhythmic assault [2:09-2:42] only to toss in a classic riff pattern more akin to late ‘80s BATHORY (think Blood Fire Death) than anything we’ve heard from HATE FOREST thus far.
HATE FOREST is truly Against All Odds. And being a betting man, the odds had best seek shelter. HATE FOREST is coming.
Review By: Lord Randall
HATE FOREST
Against All Odds
Osmose Productions