Hatebreed

Hatebreed hit the ground running, screaming, fighting and destroying on Perseverance, their major label debut. While past efforts have never lived up to the surprising amount of hype these hardcore monsters generate, none shall be disappointed with Perseverance. The band plays a fairly standard brand of metallic hardcore, keeping things heavy, fast and comfortably simplistic throughout most of the album, but producer Matt Hyde really turns the intensity up a notch here, creating a monstrously heavy bass crunch that just envelops the listener in a blanket of sonic comfort. While the band offers nothing new in the way of ideas, their "chugga, chugga” boom sounds so perfect and so honest that it lays almost any other hardcore band to waste. The album is comparable to Slayer's latest in terms of a relentless onslaught that is short, violent and unquestionably real. No small praise, considering Hatebreed is working within the confines of an extremely stale genre.