Hate – Bellum Regis

vote
7.5

• Band:
  Hate
• Duration: 00:46:12
• Available since: 02/05/2025
• Label:

• Metal Blade Records

Streaming not yet available

When a band like Hate arrives at the thirteenth album, the real challenge is no longer to play, but how to make it still interesting and expressive. “Bellum Regis” enters the scene with a decisive step, without bombastic announcements, but with the calm security of those who know every corner of their musical territory. There is no need for too many upheavals or theater strokes: just know how to sharpen the right tools, at the right time. And in this new chapter, ours seem to have found a balance that sounds familiar, but lets you glimpse more subtle movements under the surface.
Activates since 1991, the Poles led by ATF Sinner have long tried to leave behind the simple label of “Behemoth disciples”, trying to transform themselves into an entity capable of telling their vision of certain so -called Blacker Death Metal in a more autonomous voice. If the early 2000s had shown a martial, sharp and direct sound, in the last albums the group sought new nuances, embracing larger, almost ritual atmospheres, and building articulated concepts that tried to push beyond the purely aggressive dimension.
“Bellum Regis” is part of this path as a particularly complete stage. The album summarizes the last two decades of the group with a synthesis that tries to avoid simple self -celebration, instead aiming for an organic integration of the two main stylistic strands that have defined their evolution: on the one hand, the epic and gloomy suggestions, daughters of the Black Metal world; on the other, the telluric aggression of the east-European school death metal. In this dynamic balance, the traces of the album move, all capable of alternating narrative tensions and lashing impacts with a taste for the form that, today more than ever, makes the difference.
Riffing returns to being more angular and rocky, bringing the period 2003–2010 back to memory, but it does so without sacrificing the complexity and shades achieved in the most recent works. The guitar lines are not limited to building sound walls: they often insinuate themselves into darker, almost liturgical textures, however always supported by a robust and well centered rhythmic section. Atf Sinner proves once again the beating heart of the band, not only for his vocal test, but for the consistency of the musical and lyrical vision. The concept, even without overlooking the music, permeates the album with a constant feeling of decadent majesty, amplified by well -kept arrangements and by short female voice interventions that enrich without invading.
The production, powerful but never excessively plasticized, enhances the shades of the disc and clearly restores both violence and introspection. The impression is that of a job designed in detail, but not for this sterile or calculated: “Bellum Regis” flows without hitches, with ease, dusters at times formulas perhaps considered today démodé, but always with a solid inspiration.
In an era in which this type of Black-Death Metal often risks playing Mannerist or emptied, a disc like this, well interpreted by an expert group, recalls that the efficacy is not in the novelty or revival at all costs, but in knowing how to give new life to what is known thoroughly. And in this respect, “Bellum Regis” is one of the most successful chapters of the very long path of the hate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huthf8mf6cw