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The only other Hate Eternal album I have heard is King Of All Kings, which I found so technical and tight it bordered on anal retentive. So I've never been what you'd call a fan of this band, which is why I'm surprised to find Fury & Flames getting my rocks off. Hate Eternal are mostly known for the time their mainstay Eric Rutan spent in Morbid Angel, but with this, their fourth album, they have produced a better disc than Morbid Angel have managed in years.

I'm not really a devotee of technical Death Metal, but this album is savage enough to be good despite that tag. Hate Eternal keep their technicality out of the wank zone and feed it into heavy-as-fuck blasts of high speed killing. Especial standouts include "Whom Gods May Destroy", "Bringer Of Storms", and "The Funerary March", but even the other songs are solid and visceral. This is what it is — hyperspeed technical Death Metal — and nothing else, but it succeeds very well at what it's trying for. I don't know, I've seen a lot of bad reviews of this, which seem to take the album to task for just being a Death Metal album, which is kind of odd. There is no whiff of originality here at all, but devotees of Morbid Angel, Deicide, Krisiun and Vital Remains will find plenty of meat here to bite into. Fury & Flames is just an excellent old-school Death Metal CD, and I haven't been able to pry it out of my player for a week now. Highly recommended for Death fans.