ALBUM REVIEW: Hath - "All That Was Promised"

New Jersey’s Hath are back with their highly anticipated second full-length album “All That Was Promised” (Willowtip Records). It follows up their amazing first full-length release “Of Rot and Ruin” from 2019 and the band have said that the new 9-track album is “darker and more punishing than we expected”. Adam Burke has worked his magic to create the album cover art and, as usual, his work is stunning.

“We’ve experimented with more varied sounds and new ideas. The content on this album is more personal and introspective, with songs about enduring change and all the promises made to us in life, broken and otherwise.”

Hath

The album features well-crafted opening and closing tracks, which begin and end your journey through this album perfectly. The opening track “The Million Violations” starts the album off with melody and drama and leaves you excited to hear more. The closing track “Name Them Yet Build No Monument” is the most death metal in style of all the tracks on the album. It has all the beloved characteristics of death metal and ends with an emotive and lugubrious guitar section, accompanied by soft whispering vocals. It leaves you feeling slightly despondent, yet thoughtful about the subject matter of the album.

Hath are true masters, when it comes to blackened death metal and manage to blend the two styles beautifully in the songs “Lithopaedic”, “Death Complex”, “Iosis” and “Casting The Self”. These songs feature both death and black metal vocal styles and also a pleasing mixture of musical elements, taken from both genres. Intertwined amongst the blackened death are surprising melodic sections, which are very satisfying.

Hath have created a lot of drama and an ‘epic’ feeling throughout this album. The songs “Kenosis” (see the video at the bottom of the page) and “All That Was Promised” are full-on “going into battle” songs – they feature rhythmic pounding beats, tension building drum work, fantastic ear-melting guitar solos and catchy chorus melodies.

My favourite track on the album is track 5 “Decollation”, but I think that it should have been called “EARGASM”. It is the song with the most black metal influences and right off the bat, it smacks you in the face with a loud, intense wall of blackness. The production is crystal clear, with just a light sprinkling of that OSBM ‘fuzziness’ for authenticity. The song suddenly breaks into a interesting, melodic section which focuses on the guitar and bass. The light drums create a sense of tension and build up, before a second even bigger wall of black metal-ness smashes into you as it crescendos.

Overall, this album is a really fantastic example of how blackened death metal should be executed and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to it.

Rating: 8.5/10

FFO: Bloodbath, Gojira, Akercocke.