The Only Law Is Survival

With all the personality of a paperweight, Hateplow attempted to trump their 1998 debut Everybody Dies with a more focused and ferocious follow-up. Taking equal queues from both the speed and hostility of deathgrind and the balanced death/thrash breaks of their sibling Malevolent Creation, The Only Law is Survival is sadly an even more indistinct entity, failing to provide even a handful of riffs that feel fresh or exciting. The process here is all too painfully obvious and simple: blast alongside boring guitar patterns and then erupt into tough guy breakdowns, the back again, while a concoction of gruff and snarled vocals splatter about the atmosphere with violent abandon.

It's a tightly executed sophomore, but that's about all I can say in its favor, for it sizzles off its own chemicals like a bum flare that is fired into the atmosphere but fails to provide any signal to its anticipatory audience. Searching for a mindless metallic onslaught which you'll forget existed within about 5-10 minutes? Sate yourself on numbing, generic explosions of testosterone like "Should I Care?", "Outcast", "Emotional Catastrophe", and "Traitor". The majority of the album feels as if someone gathered up the least impressive riffs/albums of Malevolent Creation, Deicide and Napalm Death and chucked them into a blender, recording whatever emerged as a result. I would honestly consider this the most indistinct studio album Phil Fasciana has ever performed upon, solely staked upon its lack of intriguing material. Even when the band breaks their vapid velocity mold for the slug and chug of "Incarcerated (Intent to Sell)", nothing comes of it.

This album even fails to be as revolting or shocking as its predecessor. You get a general musing tribute to the adult entertainment industry in "Addicted to Porn", but most of the remaining lyrics are focused around generic threats of bodily harm, somewhat dumbed down and 'safer' than a few of the disgusting concepts explored on Everbody Dies. The mix here is efficient but dry, not that the writing has much depth for it to flesh out, and I have the lasting impression that these gentlemen could have written ten albums of this quality within a week, choosing to adopt the first riffs and tempos that come to mind and abandoning any notion of longevity. Sure, it's all fast and would piss off your in-laws, but these are not effective enough criteria to make the CD stand out against a massive international expose of disposable death and grind.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com

For years this album has stood in my collection as one of the proud members of an elite club. That club is reserved for records which I consider to be the very best; succeeding along many lines of criticism. Among few others "The Only Law is Survival" is one CD that I listen from beginning to end and appreciate every minute of.

For those of you unfamiliar with Hateplow they are a side-project of members of Malevolent Creation. In fact, the only line-up differences between TOLIS (2000) and Malevolent Creation's "Envenomed" (also 2000) are Doug Humlack on bass and Kyle Symons on vocals. Symons later became the vocalist for Malevolent and appeared on albums "The Will to Kill" and "Warkult".

Now you have the background.

Like Malevolent Creation, Hateplow play a death metal in the Florida vein. The songs are catchy, memorable, short and relentless! In fact the major difference between the two bands, which share most of the same members, is Hateplow's emphasis on ferocity. As such, they are often labeled "grind", appropriately, however I think Hateplow pay more attention to song structure than most grindcore bands I've heard.

The guitars are simple, straightforward and punishing. Their function is to create a cohesiveness between fast riffs and fast drumming. The drums, performed by none other than Dave Culross, are pummeling and to the point. The vocals are what I call a "power growl". They are intense, delivered with great power and focused on such, rather than depth or gurgle.

The end result is an album completely focused and sharpened like an edged weapon. In intensity and power, "The Only Law is Survival" is up there among such great death metal gems as Vader's "Litany" and Suffocation's EP "Despise the Sun". It achieves the label that so many throw around indiscriminately: "FUCKING BRUTAL". If you don't have it, buy it, it is well worth full price!!!

I had always heard good comments on this group in the past years and so I decided to give it a change and I was really surprised! I knew that in this project there were members from Malevolent Creation but still now I can’t realize how could they put out such a violent album. If their first effort was more focused on the pure death metal with more mid paced riffs, here we have a carnage!

Musically this album can be seen as a mix of early grindcore influences with a massive dose of brutal death. Try to imagine a group like Lock Up with Malevolent Creation influences and maybe you have an idea of their violence. Even the production is in pure Malevolent Creation style, being very similar to the one in Fine Art Of Murder album. Culross at the drums is inhuman, always perfect during the neverending blast beast and the fast bass drum parts.

Already from the opener, the title track, you are hit by a fast grind/death train at maximum speed. No mid tempo, just blast beats. The good mix of growls and screams is lethal for my ears and reminds me Napalm death too. It is very hard to say which are the stand out tracks here but surely "Addicted To The Porn" is one of my favourites: hardcore up tempo with blast beats on the funny refrain. Terrific.

The bass sound is in evidence during "Without Weapons" song and "Payback" and it’s never too distorted but quite clean and pounding. A really good and rare thing in this genre. The continue drums-guitars stop’n’go are unbelievable in their murderous precision. "Incarcerated" song is the “slowest” one here, but the beating, pounding bass drum sound is always so violent and it won’t let you relax. The grind return of the last two tracks ends an incredible album, monstrous in intensity and violence.

Recommended to all the death/grind maniacs out there. If you are into Terrorizer, last Napalm Death and Lock Up, check this out!!