Hatewave - Hatewave (2000)

 

Cost: $2.00

 

I remember seeing positive reviews for Hatewave's 1997 demo in 'zines at the time, and distinctly recall the medieval impalement cover of the demo being pictured in Sounds of Death (thought their logo style was atypical, though cool looking). Never ended up buying the demo, and when the full length came out, I kind of soured on checking out the band after seeing a band pic where Weasel Walter was in his low-effort zombie getup, and the prematurely balding vocalist/guitarist sported the unfortunate combination of corpsepaint, a dog collar, and a tourist-merch Chicago t-shirt. It just reeked of being goofy and unserious. Further scaring me off, I think I read a review that quoted a bio mentioning their noise/no-wave origins. Still, I would have been willing to give the CD a chance if I had come across it cheaply, but that never happened until now.

 

As it turns out, there was never anything to worry about. This is quite an enjoyable mix of grind with black and death metal. I was expecting the black metal influences to mostly manifest in the vocals and production choices, so it surprised me a little how much it infiltrates the riffage at times, especially on the two opening tracks. The amount of DM and BM influence varies somewhat from song to song, although as a whole the CD leans a bit more to the deathgrind side. I also assumed the CD was going to be quite a bit weirder due to Weasel Walter's involvement, but this ends up being the most straightforward band of his that I've ever heard. That said, there are a couple spots with unusual time signatures, discordant guitars, or oddly structured, nearly mathgrindy bits, but these are minimal, and the music never gets too experimental for its own good.

 

The final 3 tracks of the disc are unlisted bonuses, and are the songs from the demo that were not re-recorded for the album. Stylistically they're the same as the rest of the music, although recorded with a much rumblier and grind-appropriate sound compared to the more metallic production of the album tracks, which were done at Quali-Tone with Brian Griffin.

 

Glad I was finally able to check this out.