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HatePlow > Everybody Dies > Reviews > The_Emo_Hater
HatePlow - Everybody Dies

Born with both - 91%

The_Emo_Hater, October 15th, 2009

In regards to the title of this review, this debut combines the death metal riffage and the blast-happy sensibilities of grind. Featuring members of Cannibal Corpse and Malevolent Creation, the expectations for Hateplow were relatively high. As a side project of sorts, would this be a rousing success or looked upon as a waste of time (Six Feet Under, I'm looking at you)? Thankfully with a few minor exceptions, their first offering delivers the goods.

First of all, if you're expecting the gory straightforward bludgeoning of CC or the violent death/thrash style of MC, you'll be disappointed. Aside from the riffing sounding similar to Fine Art of Murder era Malevolent, Hateplow sounding nothing like the aforementioned. Crazy fucking Larry Hawke does an outstanding job on the drums, preferring blasts but occasionally utilizing slower beats and kicking out the double bass to great effect. Unfortunately, he passed before this album was released. Rob Barrett and Phil Fasciana are excellent as always with their work, using both faster and slower riffs that lean heavily towards thrash. Tim Scott's basswork is buried under the riffs for the most part but shines with the handful of bass solos present throughout. Lastly, Kyle Symons utilizes both lower growls and higher screams, and they souns decent, though they tend to lack power in a few songs.

The lyrical topics in the songs range from little prison bitches to coprophilia to chicks menstruating and some of them are outright hilarious (i.e. "20 dollars for a rock, for it she'll suck a cock"). It is noted in the booklet that the lyrics are, in fact, real stories, which for some sick reason, makes it all the more funnier. I don't know why I find that eating poop and sucking phallus could be so fucking funny, but I digress. The writing could be a little better but that is just a trifle complaint compared to the ferocity of the songs themselves, at least for this being released back in the late 90s.

Musically, the songs range from slower, almost doomish numbers ("Stalker", "In the Ditch"), to compact blinding blastfucks of blasphemy("$20 Blowjob", "Challenged") to short-ass pieces of grinding insanity ("Anally Annie"). There are no solos to be found, save for the solo on the hidden track, but they really don't make much of a difference, and besides, solos wouldn't really fit in with these songs. The title track itself starts off with about 40 seconds of a simple bassline before erupting forth into a raging beast of an opener. "The Gift Giver" is just under a minute in length and consist of the verse being repeated three times, with Kyle's vocals going from almost guttural to nearly shrieking. Finally, closer "Born With Both" has some really catchy riffs and alternates between thrash beats and blasts. Let your disc continue to run after the tune ends, and after a few minutes of silence, you'll be treated to a death metal rendition of the Cream classic, "Sunshine of your Love". It is pretty faithful to the original, aside from the heavier guitars and the vocals. BUT WAIT....THERE'S MORE!!!!! A few seconds after "Sunshine.." comes to an end, listen in anticipation you'll be treated to.......a five second drum fill. Woohoo.

Other than a few minor quibbles, Hateplow's debut is a very solid piece of deathgrind madness that should appeal to any fan of punishing aggressiveness.

R.I.P. "Crazy" Larry Hawke