"Armageddon March Eternal"
(Threeman Recordings)
The Project Hate MCMXCIX is a metal band out of Scandinavia. The group is a brutal mix of European death metal in the vein of Dimmu Borgir only much tighter and more advanced from a music (and talent) standpoint. All this brutality is tempered with delicate (albeit operatic) female vocals. The band is largely known only in the underground metal circuit and that's a real shame. The music is much more complex and the band deserves to break moreso than the similar-sounding Nightwish.
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This album can appeal to so many metal genre fans. There's a hint of industrial grind; there's the epic feel permeating each track; the European groove oozes out of each minute of the disc; the death metal vocals are clean enough to actually mean something. In fact, I applaud the vocal work on both ends of the vocal spectrum as it all sounds clean and it's clear a lot of work went into the recording process.
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The theatrics of the female vocals sometimes seem wedged into the tracks. There's a way to make the switches work (and when they do, the juxtaposition is amazing) ... Project Hate knows how to do it smoothly, but too often prefer to simply ram the breaks in with little rhyme or reason.
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Take Nightwish (or Lacuna Coil if you're unfamiliar with the former) and mix it with symphonic European metal. Each track feels like an epic with plenty of operatic filler.
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If you are a fan of metal/rock bands that trade female and male vocals but wished there was more of a death metal edge, this band is for you.
