The Project Hate is a band that is relatively unknown, due to the fact that they don't tour, and it's a goddamned shame! The Project Hate has, in my mind, done the impossible time after time again and improved themselves with each album. It's a band that sounds like no one else and is hard to label. Explaining it to fellow interested metal heads I usually call them Epic, Progressive Death Metal with electronic/industrial parts. The emphasis of my label is on Death Metal. Through and through, The Project Hate is brutal and extremely heavy.
The jump from In Hora Mortis Nostræ, The Hate's previous effort, to The Lustrate Process is not as far as the jump from the album prior to In Hora Mortis Nostræ. Music-wise at least. Production and tone wise, The Lustrate Process is much more clear and crisp and the bass sounds absolutely amazing and tangy. The drums are as good as ever, and the new drummer lives up to the always stellar drumming, even adding some fitting blastbeats, which are a new addition. The amount of layers to this band have always been staggering and it's no different this time around. I'm still finding new details.
The Lustrate Process has a lot of guest appearances and it would take too long to go into each one, But I will say this: All of them are good.
While The Lustrate Process only span 7 songs, each one is an epic masterpiece, and the album still manages to clock in at 64 minutes! This means the songs are really long, the shortest being 7 minutes, whereas the rest are around 8-9 minutes long. The opening track is almost 13 minutes long but let me make it clear right away; You'll be clinging to your speakers for every second of The Lustrate Process. There's not a single boring or skippable part or song on this album.
The lyrical themes for The Project Hate have always been anti-christian, something that I normally denounce as being too simplistic. Lord K however, the mastermind behind the band, writes lyrics like no other. At his disposal, he has two incredible vocalists; Jörgen Sandström is fucking brutal, and his timing is flawless, but put against the absolutely beautiful voice of Jo Enckell, it becomes something more. It has to be heard, words can simply not do it justice.
The only downside, and this is really nitpicking, is that the closing track, "The Burial of Gods", isn't as powerful as the other songs on the album. But this is truly a minor issue. This album is, like all their previous albums, better than the one preceeding it and each preceeding album was perfect. If you don't know this band and you like Death Metal, go buy their records, you will NOT be disappointed!
Second Opinion by Argus
So I started playing this album, not knowing what to expect. The opening riff to intro track "Descend Into the Eternal Pits" was excellent, I thought...but it lost me with Enckell's vocals. Don't get me wrong, her voice is excellent, it is powerful, but fitting is not a word I'd use here. The harsh vocals are good, a little better than standard-fare Death Metal vocals, but, ultimately, they are still forgettable. My biggest complaint, however, is the length of the songs. It is not that long songs bother me - quite the contrary; some of my own are longer than those here. It is that they are unnecessarily long - they seem like they're going somewhere...and they never do. One is constantly left with the feeling of "o.k., is this song over yet?"...some would've been boring if four minutes in length, let alone 8:55. What's more, they seem to cram a lot of clearly unrelated riffs into one song, and it gives it a very disjointed feel. At times it was a struggle not to hit the Next button.
I will applaud them on their guitar and drum tones...bass is good too, easily audible, very dark sound to it, too. I'll grant that this band is unique enough, they've got some good riffs, and they each know their instruments... I'm not a huge fan of DM, so I'll sum it up by saying that I just wish that "unique" here also equalled "interesting."
Second Opinion by Argus
So I started playing this album, not knowing what to expect. The opening riff to intro track "Descend Into the Eternal Pits" was excellent, I thought...but it lost me with Enckell's vocals. Don't get me wrong, her voice is excellent, it is powerful, but fitting is not a word I'd use here. The harsh vocals are good, a little better than standard-fare Death Metal vocals, but, ultimately, they are still forgettable. My biggest complaint, however, is the length of the songs. It is not that long songs bother me - quite the contrary; some of my own are longer than those here. It is that they are unnecessarily long - they seem like they're going somewhere...and they never do. One is constantly left with the feeling of "o.k., is this song over yet?"...some would've been boring if four minutes in length, let alone 8:55. What's more, they seem to cram a lot of clearly unrelated riffs into one song, and it gives it a very disjointed feel. At times it was a struggle not to hit the Next button.
I will applaud them on their guitar and drum tones...bass is good too, easily audible, very dark sound to it, too. I'll grant that this band is unique enough, they've got some good riffs, and they each know their instruments... I'm not a huge fan of DM, so I'll sum it up by saying that I just wish that "unique" here also equalled "interesting."
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