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HATEFORM hail from Finland, which has shown us some great metal since 2000. They are on their way to proving that point beyond a doubt with their new release Dominance. It has the brutality, the balls, and all the mayhem you need. The funny thing is that they do not sound like the other well know metal acts from their country. Not by a long shot. But I like the theory, why follow...when you can lead! HATEFORM show the progressive death genre that there are some great new songs to be heard. Loud and proud! Rock on!When I first popped in Dominance, I thought "oh my, it is MACHINEHEAD!" The intro riff on "Dominion" sounds like something right off Burn my Eyes. But it quickly leaps into another crushing riff. In fact, there are plenty of crushing riffs throughout Dominance. Put it this way...if you combined MACHINEHEAD's sound with BEHEMOTH's brutality, and mix in some of BIOMECHANICAL's solos and changes you would have HATEFORM. I am not kidding, and have painstakingly thought about who the band sounds like. This was my conclusion. haha The skin pounder Tuomas Vähämaa is one of the best I have heard in awhile. Tight and focused. The guitars are downtuned and have that CARCASS meets CANNIBAL CORPSE trill riff down to a science. Tom and Tomy can also shred! The vocals are more hardcore/metalcore than death metal and actually sound really good.
With all the awesome sounds coming from Dominance, the one thing that makes it hard to get into is its repetitiveness. A lot of the songs do sound similar and I don't know if that is from the song structure or from the mixdown/mastering? I tend to sway towards that mastering. There aren't very many dynamics. With the exception of an acoustic breakdown during the song "Bled," everything else sounds similar. Not that's a bad thing, just gives you fatigue after about five/six songs. That makes it hard to actually rate an album like this because I rate the album as a whole. After listening to it 10 times, I still couldn't differentiate one song from the next.
PITRIFF RATING - 7/10 - I will sum it up by saying HATEFORM rock! If you are a fan of any of the mentioned bands, do not hesitate to pick up this release. While I really like Dominance, it just seems too long and repetitive. If the band can change things up a little bit, they would be at another level. At times a bit mechanical, this is still a great release for progressive death metal. So do yourself a favor and give it a try.
3,5/5
Rian Stallkamp
Pitriff
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