Produced by Erik Rutan
Released: 2005
Hate Eternal’s strictly generic brand of brutal death metal is built primarily on blast beats and speed, but that shouldn’t give them an excuse to be just plain boring. After listening to I, Monarch I was left wondering if there’s a more over-rated and significantly less-inspired drummer in metal than Derek Roddy. Over the course of this album’s ten tracks, Roddy plays precisely the same beat, at precisely the same speed, over and over again with virtually no deviation whatsoever. Even when the band knocks the speed back a few cogs for something like the Morbid Angel-like mid-pace of the title track, Roddy can’t seem to do anything else but drop in the same monotonous, uninspired blasting he plays on every other track. The most frustrating thing is that I know Derek can do better than this, and so can Erik Rutan. Both of them have played in some of the greatest death metal bands of all, but on this album neither of them sound like they're really trying.
While it’s true that Hate Eternal has never really stretched themselves beyond the predictable and generic, on I, Monarch it's made so much worse mainly because of the drummer’s phoned-in performance. “The Plague of Humanity” and “The Victorious Reign” are reasonable stand-outs, but I, Monarch is about as uninteresting and ordinary as brutal death metal gets, and being able to play a blast beat for 42 minutes straight doesn’t make you a great drummer, just a fast one.
- Two Demons
- Behold Judas
- The Victorious Reign
- To Know Our Enemies
- I, Monarch
- Path to the Eternal Gods
- The Plague of Humanity
- It Is Our Will
- Sons of Darkness
- Faceless One
Rating: 14%
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