Death Metal band Hate Eternal hit Dubai last weekend, brought out by the UAE’s only metal label Spellbind Records. Here is the review of the gig by Paul Williams, Label Assistant at the record company:
It’s not every day that the Middle East gets graced by extreme metal royalty, so when such a prolific figure as Erik Rutan – a man that has been involved in the creation of some immensely crushing death metal albums, both as a musician and as a producer – is announced to be coming to the United Arab Emirates as part of Hate Eternal’s tour of South East Asia, well, lets just say that the excitement levels were rather higher than is the norm for locally based gigs.
Of course, before the crowd was able to experience aural destruction at the hands of Hate Eternal, they had to be softened up by Saudi Arabian grindcore three-piece, Creative Waste, and they softened tem up all right. Playing a rather minimalistic Nasum-esque style of grind, Creative Waste hooked the crowd from the get go. Whether it was due to the large amount of extreme metal fans in the crowd or just the overall energy of their music, Creative Waste had the crowd moshing, headbanging, and a few fans took a chance to stage dive. Prompted on by the crowd the band put on an excellent performance, with vocalist, Fawaz, channeling that energy into his yelling and growling, while guitarist, Essam, and drummer, Talal, played their instruments with precision. They no doubt left Dubai with a lot of new fans.
Up next were Dubai old timers, Perversion with some brutal death metal and once again the crowd seemed to be filled with energy that can rarely be seen at shows over here. While I’m not saying that Perversion don’t deserve a great crowd reaction, I do find it amazing that they got one seeing as they have played so many times in front of the same crowd, but this seemed wholely new. This was most definitely one of the best gigs they’ve played in a while. With session drummer, Alex Micklewright, fitting in well with the band now that they’ve played together a couple of times, everything seemed to fall into place for Perversion at this show, and they even saw fit to play some new material for the first time. Beasty is all I can say.
While the crowd seemed to go all out for the two opening acts, the arrival of Hate Eternal on stage called for a resurgence of hellish fury in the pit. Rutan and co. commanded the room with each growl, blastbeat, and glare – calling for more ferocity, and wind milling of hair. Playing through a set list created to please all Hate Eternal fans – with this fan being particularly fond of the inclusion of ‘The Art Of Redemption’ on the set list – it finally became clear to me why this band is so highly regarded, not only in the extreme metal scene, but also across the metal spectrum. They played hate fueled and high energy music to a crowd who loved every minute of it, and from the looks on their faces after the gig, they loved it just as much.
US-based death metal band Hate Eternal are hitting the UAE shores and will be bringing their brand of face-melting metal to the Ratsky 3 club in Bur Dubai on May 11th.
Radio Metality UAE