CMJ (10/27/03, p.56) - "...Make no mistake: No Band in 2003 comes close to the full-on brutality that this Connecticut quartet spews with unquenchable vengeance. If there's one underground band that matters the most, it's Hatebreed..."
Hatebreed: Jamey Jasta (vocals); Sean Martin (guitar); Chris Beattie (bass); Matt Byrne (drums).
Recorded at Planet Z Studios, Hadley, Massachusetts.
There comes a time in young music fans' lives when they put aside the flashy, lightweight records of their teens, come face to face with humanity's harsh realities, and pick new tunes appropriate to a more serious and realistic worldview. Anyone who feels that it's time to relegate such albums to the box under the bed would do well to start a new life-phase with a little Hatebreed.
On THE RISE OF BRUTALITY, the band lives up to the record's title, delivering a disc of astonishing purity and extreme volume. There is no rapping. There are no turntables and no power ballads. In fact, there is nothing here but a mind-numbing, ferocious, and totally unrelenting onslaught of drums, guitar, bass, and hoarse-voiced shouting. Unlike similar-sounding bands, though, Hatebreed never sounds less than totally impassioned, making for a uniformly thrilling listening experience. Taking its cues from socially aware 1980s hardcore like Sick of It All and Agnostic Front, the band combines positive messages with enough hyper-speed double-bass drumming and stop-on-a-dime rhythmic shifts to keep even the most sugar and testosterone-addled youth moshing until they reach retirement age.