Listen, I know. Even though they were founded first, Poland’s Hate sounds like Behemoth circa  Zos Kia Kultus, Demigod, Evangelion. I seen them be called ‘Wish’ Behemoth or ‘Temu’ Behemoth, but the fact is, I’ve ordered some pretty cool shit from Wish and Temu.

And with the band’s 13th album that’s what you get- some pretty cool shit as the album continues the bands solid run of albums over the last decade plus years starting with 2010s Erebos, (where they started to embrace the Behemoth hues fully), 2013s SolarFlesh, and certainly their last two excellent albums in 2019s Auric Gates of Veles and 2021s Rugia (for some reason I have not heard 2017s Tremendum or 2015s Crvsade:Zero.

Bellum Regiis (‘King’s War/War of Kings’) does nothing different from the last few albums. It’s big, beefy, Polish-inspired death/black metal with a clear and obvious influence that they wear proudly on their sleeve. Adam the First Sinner still has one of my favorite death metal voices around with a commanding, but understandable bellow (I understand he 100% sounds like mid-era Nergal), and musically, the band strides confidently across black and death metal.

As with the last few albums, there’s a superb mix of blistering, black-ish metal that delivers blast beats and hefty tremolo-picked riffs, with a wide array of militant, authoritative marches, which is where Hate shines a little more, but everything is top notch, including the mastering effort from Tony Lindgren (Aborted, Abysmal Dawn, Borknagar, Dimmu Borgir, etc), which makes everything cystal clear but still plenty heavy.

All 9 tracks from the opening title track to the closer “Ageless Harp of Devilry” deliver the goods and stay to a pretty rigid formula that Hate has perfected over 30 or so years, though the current sound is only about 15 years old (the early albums were straight up Floridian death metal and a few cyber elements here and there). But certainly tracks like the more controlled “Iphigenia” and “A Ghost of Lost Delight” (both with some subtle female chants), or searing blacker standouts, “The Vanguard”,  “Alfa Inferi Goddess of War”  and superb closer “Ageless Harp of Devilry” show Hate at their most confident and varied. But the unmistakable Behemoth influence arises plenty, as in “Prophet of Arkhan” for example.

13 albums in, and Hate are still a model of Polish consistency. They may not be truly elite or groundbreaking at anything, but man, have they locked into an enjoyable, solid style of black/death metal for several albums now.

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