Here's a full-on assault for your ears. R.O.D. (Razor Of Death) assail with their third full-length album 'HateSpeech' which is 10 songs in under 25 minutes. The band play fast death/thrash metal employing some crossover and even grindcore influences.

While every instrument is audible, together they mix into typical soup: The drums and often layered vocals are fucking loud, unpleasantly shadowing most of the rhythm guitar playing. It's a bit of a mess altogether. But that is not telling everything... I find the songs missing adherent riffage (even when attentively listened to) and other memorable attributes. Plus, there's no character in here; it all sounds familiar from somewhere. There's loads of energy captured on here, but it doesn't help much when the songwriting isn't noteworthy (still there's some better parts here and there). There's no melodiousness here, but it's not the reason why this is "in one ear, out the other" type listening experience. Most of the guitar solos are like insane horse laughter (Slayer & Vader), so no help from that direction either. At times rhythm changes sound more like bad ideas than anything like a suitable solution. The half stomping 'Holocaust Industry' sounds a lot like modern Cannibal Corpse, and in a good way; that kind of real tempo changes do make a notable difference! Generally, 'HateSpeech' sounds like a Swedish deathrash album (e.g. Defleshed, Carnal Forge and such) coming from Poland. Positive thing is that listener might feel like being in the center of a vortex.

Lyrics-wise R.O.D. are commenting on modern trends, such as cancel culture, selfish hedonism, faking what one is and sheeple, but also age-old human traits like warring. Sometimes suitably angry, sometimes too much boomer-like. There's loads of lyrics in each song, meaning that almost ongoing vocalization happens throughout the album, sometimes from beginning of a song. It is dominating, to tell the truth, and one thing about them is invariability. Upper throat growling and bellowing that is somewhat rougher version of nowadays' Max Cavalera is how the vocals sound like. There's accompanying vocalist too, but it is hard to tell apart (maybe more like a backing vocalist, I do not know).

This is lots of racket, but compositions-wise it is rather vapid. It's one of those releases, that I cannot remember close to anything at all about even after repeated listenings. All rampage and no play makes Rod a dull boy.

Rating: 5½ (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
12/17/2022 17:55