Albums

Album Review: Fate

[Album: Vultures]
[Label: Metal Blade]

The last time I heard a death metal album with so much promising guitar work from a band of such a young average age was when I first heard Decapitated’s ‘Winds of Creation’. We all know how well Decapitated developed into such a formidable force in extreme metal, and I hope the same can be achieved by this band.

Fate’s debut release on Metal Blade is a complete technical death workout with some youthful hardcore breakdowns thrown in—a definite sign of both their age and metal’s continuing development.

The five-piece learnt their trade from an early age and by 2005 had recruited 14-year-old guitarist Kyle Fishman. The band progressed so quickly that they were invited to play the Sacramento leg of the Vans Warped Tour in that year. Considering that the band was still at high school they even managed to play two shows a week for a year.

However, youthfulness in such an extreme and perhaps mature genre can have an adverse effect on the music. The vocals on the album seem to suffer because of it. They are often lacking the forcefulness that accompanies the music, and are often too raspy or uncontrollably deep—such as on ‘Battlegrounds beneath My Feet’. I imagine after a long-scheduled tour and plenty of beers and smokes, Justin Krahn’s vocals will change a lot, and so will perhaps the rest of the bands. Some of the songs seem the like they are half-songs. Tracks such as ‘Your Creed is Greed’ could easily be stretched out to create a more “complete” song. ‘Vultures’ has an epic feel to the song with dual guitar harmonies throughout most of the track, though it only lasts just over two minutes long. In fact the average track-length of all 10 tracks is just over three minutes. It doesn’t really detract from the impact of the songs though, and perhaps leans over to the more hardcore influence on the band.

Elsewhere on the album, tracks such as ‘Decapitate Delilah’ have a great mix of thrash and The Acacia Strain-style bass-driven breakdowns, and ‘Psychopathic Diary’ leans obviously towards the Necrophagist stance of fast technical riffs and harmonic squeals. ‘Harrowing Infidelity’ is a thrash/speed metal beast but also contains a groove-orientated mid-section. Overall, this album is by no means perfect, but it shows plenty of promise and it definitely deserves all the attention it gets.

For fans of: Decapitated, The Acacia Strain, Necrophagist

Band Links: Fate

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Tags: album, cd, Fate, Vultures, review, Metal Blade

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