After 13 years, Canadian Hardcore veterans Hatebreed are still pissed off as hell and god dammit they’re letting you know.
From the get-go this album is all rage. Opener ‘Put it to the Torch’ kicks it all off with chunky, heavy riffs that act as a taste of what’s to come over the next half hour or so. Musically the album delivers pretty much what you would expect. There’s no revolutionary song-writing techniques or studio trickery but that’s by no means a problem. After all that’s not what this, or genre for that matter, is about. All the riffs in this album are perfect to bang your head to, even if after some time they get a bit stale, and there’s an abundance of vocal parts for a crowd to shout along with which will make for some great moments in Hatebreed’s future live shows.
Throughout the album there are some scattered lyrical gems, like “Sometimes standing for what you believe means standing alone” from the second track ‘Honor Never Dies’, and if you sit through the whole album (resisting the urge to find the nearest pit and start swinging your arms), you uncover lyrical gold after lyrical gold like this on a few occasions.
The only real downfall of this one is that by the three-quarter mark you start to get a bit over it. I love hate-fuelled hardcore as much as the next guy but after half an hour the riffs start to blur together and you find yourself begging for even the slightest bit of vocal variety.
Or maybe I just get bored too easily.
Divinity of Purpose is Hatebreed doing what they do best – raising a giant middle finger to everything.
Nuclear Blast
7/10
Reviewer: Thomas Peasley