Polish death metal band Hate have been around from year 1990 and 'Cain's Way' is their 3rd album. I'm not familiar with older Hate material, but next two albums are pretty different when compared to this one.

In 2002 Hate sounded like they mixed Polish and Floridan death metal styles together. To pinpoint this down, this is generally Polish death metal mixed with Deicide, because there are lots of influences of Glen Benton's Antichristian forces. 'Cain's Way' shows a band as technical and crushing as Deicide at their best, maybe even more so. Hate utilize straight-forward double kick drumming and blast beats, but what really makes it interesting, is that they use syncopated rhythms. Riffage is mostly intense and thick, with lead guitars screeching.

The songs are sometimes separated by short samples and ambient sound parts. The songs are okay in general, but very similar to each other. Sadly there is no "killer" song featured here, so it all just become continuous mass, and this is much worse a problem than the uncharacteristic music itself. The vocals are usual growling, and powerful enough to put out the message of the band. Nicely rhythmed, at times layered (hey, have I heard this before somewhere..?!), but not very varied at all, except for a few spoken parts. There are nothing else, but than anti-religious lyrical topics. Truly surprising, right? Soundwise this is heavy, surely, but also kind of blurred.

There is no doubt, that this Polish horde is pillaging like hell. But... Is that enough? Similarities with Deicide simply haunt me all the time when listening to 'Cain's Way'. I can't help it, even though I try very hard. In all, this is well and powerfully performed stuff. However, this is faceless, definitely lacking the X factor, which is something I expected to find on an album by a 12 years old band.

Rating: 6 (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
06/05/2008 20:11