HATE - Bellum Regiis - CD [MAY 2]

CD

With a dozen ferocious and lauded albums since 1996’s Daemon Qui Fecit Terram, Hate’s lucky thirteenth album, 'Bellum Regiis', sees the unrelenting Polish quartet forging a bolder and more aggressive style than ever. Bellum Regiis’ nine songs see vocalist/guitarist ATF Sinner, guitarist Domin, drummer Nar-Sil, and bassist Tiermes honing a modern sound rife with eerie atmosphere and depth. Produced by David Castillo (Candlemass, Carcass, Dark Tranquillity, Katatonia) at Stockholm's Grondahl Studio, 'Bellum Regiis' is lyrically a more “humanity focused and personal” album than 'Rugia'. 'Bellum Regiis'’ songs, explains founder Sinner, are a timely aural and visual exploration of “a struggle for power and everything that comes with it.”

Hate, who formed in Warsaw in 1990, have been hailed as a “hallmark of consistency,” and praised as a “sleek and tight death metal monster.” Since 2017’s 'Tremendum', Hate has focused on nature and its mysteries as a main source of inspiration. As Sinner explains, "Whether that's the nature within us, around us or that we see from afar, the perspectives gained and how they relate to different overarching themes have driven each album.” For instance, 2019’s 'Auric Gates of Veles' focused on death, the Slavic perception of death in particular. Six years later, 'Bellum Regiis' finds Hate delving into “humanity and why are we, as creatures, so deeply motivated by concepts like power, wealth, glory and faith. The main theme is a struggle for power and everything that comes with it.”

Hence the album title 'Bellum Regiis', which translates to "A War of Royalty" or "A War of Kings." Sinner looks at the hard questions surrounding power—does its attainment make us aberrant or are we aberrant to begin with? The title track encompasses the LP’s leitmotif. “As a song, 'Bellum Regiis' has both a deep melancholy and a sense of grandeur,” says Sinner. “The vocals laid down by Eliza Sacharczuk (a renowned singer and voice teacher who runs a holistic arts center in Bialystok) give the song a strong sense of time. Whether that's nostalgia, reminiscence, regret, or preparation for the future is in the eye of the beholder. These wars, these struggles, have been ongoing since the dawn of our existence,” the frontman notes. “Whether they are futile or not, they are scars on our very nature.”

More than three decades into a stellar career, 'Bellum Regiis' finds Sinner as profound and poetic than ever, if not more so. To wit, “A Ghost of Lost Delight,” a song possessed of a strange melancholy and meditation. Delving into the cycles of life and death, Hate ultimatley offer a powerful and positive entreaty for hope in dark times, as pertinent in 2025 as in eons past. As Sinner sings: “In darkness we crawl toward the starlight / In a race against the flow / We saved our world from oblivion / Ghosts of lost delight... now live!”

Tracklist: 

1. Bellum Regiis
2. Iphigenia
3. The Vanguard
4. A Ghost of Lost Delight
5. Rite of Triglav
6. Perun Rising
7. Alfa Inferi Goddess of War
8. Prophet of Arkhen
9. Ageless Harp of Devilry