Review HATESPHERE ‘Hatred Reborn’

Denmark’s metal band HateSphere have been particularly successful in the 00s and have delivered the one or other milestone, think of the 2007 work ‘Serpent Smiles and Killer Eyes’ which brought the band into the Danish charts.

With guitarist Peter Lyse Hansen nowadays only one founding member is still active, but it should be noted that HateSphere has had a relatively constant line-up since 2011. New on board, however, is vocalist Mathias Uldall, who joined the band last year and makes his debut on ‘Hatred Reborn’.

Photo: Julia Nikiforova_-_JN Lightning Photography

‘Hatred Reborn’ contains ten songs, whereby ‘The Awakening’, which is at the beginning of the tracklist, is an instrumental. You can also consider this as an intro, which sounds despite its calmness rather depressing and paves the way for the title track, which slams out of the speakers next. It quickly becomes clear that Hatesphere have lost nothing in terms of power. It is the relentless mixture of thrash, groove and death metal, which echoes towards you.

No less intense, although reduced in tempo is ‘918’ while the following ‘Darkspawn’ releases the brakes and the band again goes full steam ahead. The grooving ‘Brand of Sacrifice’ tempts to headbanging as well as the closing ‘Spitting Teeth’, which follows another instrumental (‘A Violent Compulsion’).

HateSphere deliver with ‘Hatred Reborn’ an aggressive and merciless album. Driven by an boundless energy, the Danes still manage to be fully committed even after more than 20 years. This is how good thrash metal must sound like.