Hate

The mid 1990s were not kind of thrash metal, though they were a bit more forgiving to the death metal community for a time, though even by the half-way point of said decade the old ways of thrash-tinged death metal were being abandoned in droves. Sarcofago stood in a bit of a quandary considering how commercially successful Sepultura's dumbed down groove experiment "Chaos A.D." was received by the masses, but in spite of the close connection between the two bands, the former didn't full buy into the modernized sound of the day, though in some respects their 1994 effort "Hate" was beginning to flirt with it. It is definitely a departure from former practices, but not in the same way that most would come to expect.

To dispense with the obvious, the employment of a heavily mechanized sounding drum machine has a massive impact on the sound of this album. Those who might go so far as to dub this an album that tries to straddle the line between traditional death metal and Fear Factory might be onto something in that respect, though in every other respect this still has much more in common with the Florida death metal with a dash of lingering 80s occult feel to it. Along with a bit too much reliance on studio gimmicks and bizarre vocal effects, this album comes off sounding a bit comedic at times. But if this is treated as being a last ditch effort at maintaining the theatric character of 80s death/thrash while coping with a changing musical scene, this album does have merit to it.

At first glance, the massive amount of blast beats and machine-gun drumming definitely paints this album with an inclination towards Deicide and even early Suffocation at times, particularly but not limited to the ridiculously fast opening "Song Of My Death". When coupled with Wagner Antichrist's dark, throaty shouts (which are still heavily reminiscent of Angelripper) and a simplified yet still Sodom oriented riff set, this album seems to be caught somewhere between trying to sound like "Tapping The Vein" and "Effigy Of The Forgotten". Heavy commonalities to the former album can be heard on a number of extremely fast thrashing numbers like "Pact Of Cum" and "Satanic Terrorism", crossing the boundaries that separate Demolition Hammer from NYDM at several key points, though more resembling the former save the heavy usage of blast beats.

While a massive step down from the last 3 offerings (including the "Rotting EP), this is a solid, respectable effort from a band that was obviously struggling with where they should be heading given that most of their influences had opted for modernization and became shadows of their former selves. It's highly plausible to credit the perserverence of Sodom and a couple other hold outs in shapping how this album sounds, though it comes off as a bit confused and suffers from a drum sound that utterly clashes with the rest of the production (which is clearly in the same mold as earlier efforts). It falls short of being essential, but comparatively speaking it is a strong release considering the time period and competition that went with it.