Exmortus - In Hatred’s Flame

January 8, 2010

Reviewer: Lynora

I can’t figure out what boggles my mind the most, their tight crisp thrash riffs or the fact that these young men, who shred better then most of their “elders,” can create and perform as well as they do.  Exmortus is like a hidden gem waiting to be discovered.  With the best thrash guitar work I’ve heard since before these boys were born, Exmortus comes blazing out of the west as tumultuous and immense as the sun.   In their biography on their website they claim, “The heart of the band was never to become huge.  It was to play.”  But with one listen being all it takes for a lover of thrash, speed, or death metal to fall in love, Exmortus’s might find themselves growing more then they ever expected.  In Hatred’s Flame is one hell of a debut album.  It left me dumbstruck, in awe, and I found my finger pressing the rewind button more then once.

Exmortus brings us back to a time where guitars matter.  With rich guitar solos, pinch harmonics, sweeping arpeggios, harmonizing riffs, and occasionally melodic bass all breaking down into thick juicy headbanging riffs with double bass and smashing cymbals, Exmortus is everything you could want from your favorite thrash metal band.  Reminiscent of the skill of an early-blooming Megadeth, but with heavy dry lung on top, you’ll feel like you’re in a time warp, but somehow it’s even heavier then you remembered!

“Fimbulwinter” and the title track “In Hatred’s Flame” will bring you back to your secret place where everything feels right in the metal world again, while “Onslaught” and “Triumph by Fire” will have you banging your head-- whether you want to or not.  There might not be a second on this album that I found uninteresting.  This is thrash metal in its pure form.  Is it the same thing as it was in 1983?   No.  In Hatred’s Flame is evolved, but somehow it’s not distorted by the years of music and experimentation, and maybe that’s what is so appealing.  I don’t want to hear the same thing that has been done before years ago, but sometimes I want to know that there is someone out there doing it, and doing it well.  If thrash was in a bubble by itself, to me, this is where it would have evolved to, without the influence of black metal, hardcore, grindcore, or even the passing nu-metal fad.  No, these gentlemen don’t sing, and unless it’s to their grandma on her birthday, I never want them to.

It isn’t that these nineteen- and twenty-year-olds are schooling other bands out there right now that boggles my mind the most, it’s that there aren’t more people listening to In Hatred’s Flame right this very second.

Release Date: July 29, 2008
Label: Heavy Artillery Records

TRACK LISTING

1.  In Hatred's Flame
2.  Triumph By Fire
3.  War Gods
4.  Onward To Battle
5.  Valor and Might
6.  Axes of War
7.  Glory on the Battlefield
8.  Onslaught
9.  Storms
10.  Wrath of Vengeance
11.  Fimbulwinter

Total playing time: 42:58

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