Fueled by Hate

Jungle Rot is a very interesting death metal band from Wisconsin. This band has caught my attention some time ago and I consider them as really solid crew playing really catchy death metal.

Most riffs are something between Six Feet Under and Scandinavian death metal bands like Entombed, Dismember and Grave with vocals reminding Unleashed's Johnny Hedlund. But not only vocals, you can hear some of the Unleashed in 'Fractured' for example. So basically what comes to mind that there are not that many American death metal bands which would play it the Scandinavian way. And this band has made a decent attempt and definitely successful.

Guitars are slightly more polished, but still sound heavy and all riffs are really groovy. What is really interesting that when I was reading the band's description on the promo CD I found line which really made me laugh - "style similar to acts such as Slayer and Sodom, rather than the typical Cannibal Corpse and Suffocation rip-offs". Well, there's no Slayer or Sodom here, that's for sure. Whoever was writing this, hasn't listened to much metal in her/his life. Interesting example how your own recording company can confuse listeners by not very accurately presenting your style. Anyways, it's a very good production, with very interesting, low, strong growling and one of a must-have positions in my opinion. My favourite track is probably the last one - 'More Demon Souls', which style reminds me of my favourite last tracks on Edge Of Sanity albums, like 'Feedin' The Charlatan' or 'Song Of Sirens' which is more chaotic and in American death metal style. Overall the album is a really brilliant release and great for moshing live.

Originally posted on www.metalbite.com

Fueled by Hate conjures up images of a large, bulky woodland camo laden Deuce and a Half traveling noisily along a murky, muddy half-road surrounded and overlooked by tropical fruiting vegetation littering mangoes and other colorful, juicy deliciousness in the brown road-side muck, while fresh American soldiers await in the back for their inevitable destination to....you guessed it; deeper jungle, rain, swamps, rice patties and the occasional Vietnamese "civilian". These newbie soldiers anticipate the horrors of what they will have to endure in the coming months, attempting to imagine just how bad it will be, or how bad it could be....when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, a couple of Vietnamese pop out from a hidden path in the endless jungle, right onto the mud road, and into the route of the big Deuce and a Half. Riding a scooter (Standard issue equipment for them, right?), and armed with the Chinese version of the infamous AK-47 assault rifle, they begin to open fire on the unsuspecting American heroes. And this concludes my odd visions of "Intro", the first chapter to the "epic" album by Jungle Rot, Fueled by Hate, which is actually fueled by groove.

Abruptly after this minimalist, ambient-ish, throbbing and pounding jungle intro, our story kicks into high thumping octane gear with the American soldiers, once getting over their initial reaction of fear, hop out the ass-end of their Deuce and a Half and return burst fire with their dark, smooth M16 rifles, built to protect the walls of freedom and stop the spread of communism (Please read aloud, or in your head, with the peculiar voice of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman here, thank you). After a pathetically brief firefight, the foolhardy Vietcong are quickly wasted, by shooting them full of holes and filling them full of lead. While the adrenaline-pumped soldiers, after seeing their first action in "the shit", begin to chant ecstatically:

"You're gonna taste the mud,
Face down!!
My plan to kill you, it was success,
To mutilate you done with finesse,
I know it's sad, but you had to go,
Your weak existence was killing us."

Okay, not the most likely of scenarios, but alas the mood of Fueled by Hate is firmly established; a gritty, brutish, groove-filled, knuckle-dragging, primitive slab of simple meat and mangoes death metal, just like every other Jungle Rot album surrounding Fueled by Hate chronologically. However, each Jungle Rot album has a particular uniqueness that allows for every album to have its place and purpose. Fueled by Hate's purpose is most certainly a refinement and a polishing of their basic early formula from the 1990s, compacted into a 30 minute package with high production values. Fueled by Hate is a crisp, clear and polished listening experience, but somehow this does not diminish their basic nature; to be as caveman-ish as modern humanly possible. The instruments are all well-balanced, audible and mixed well, but it isn't over-produced. Fueled by Hate still holds just enough grit and ugliness to feel old school, especially in comparison to their later albums, which leads me to argue that it holds perhaps their best production post-1990s. It's explosive, booming and totally crude, rude and in-your-face, just as war metal (No, not the genre) should be.

Fueled by Hate is about as simple in approach as one could possibly imagine in modern death metal. The guitar riffs are so straightforward and simple that one wonders if they haven't been used before sometime in the past, considering this is 2004 we are talking about here. I think not though, because as simple as the riffs are, there is nothing that is as groovy and primitive. Nothing that is as downright down syndrome and Neanderthal. Fueled by Hate is fueled by hate in terms of lyrics, but in terms of music, as my title suggests, it's pretty much fueled by groove (Did I mention that?). That groove comes in the form most often by simple, mid-paced heavy downtuned chugging death metal riffs. There are frequent changes in each song though, usually sectional, but mostly just a handful of interchanging sections per song. And oh so many skank beats, oh the glorious skank beat. Jungle Rot, the chief arbiter of the skank beat in death metal. No complaints from me though, the skank beat is so headbang inducing (and fun to play) that it gets me going every time. When the song "Let Them Die" enters in, after the superb "Face Down", I can't help but instantly bang my head to that irresistible and immediate THUMP/SNARE/THUMP/SNARE combo. It's so fucking great, especially contrasted with that dumb, catchy, groovy low-tuned riff and the guttural grunting of Dave Matrise, sounding a bit like Corpsegrinder.

As for the frequent section changes within songs, they often transition between a low-tuned, catchy, groovy mid-paced riff accompanied with a skank beat or some variation of a single kick beat, but then will rather suddenly shift gears into a faster, tremolo-ish riff with double bass drumming. Jungle Rot is generally known to do this, but on Fueled by Hate it feels a bit less predictable to me, which is a good thing. Not that their previous albums suffered from being too predictable, but Fueled by Hate feels a bit more suspenseful due to this aspect (which, honestly, would be taken a bit further on War Zone). Take "Face Down" for example, which starts out with a rare double bass section and a tremolo-ish riff that transitions into a skank beat, while carrying on with the tremolo-ish riff, then suddenly shifts into a simple stupid chug riff with a thumpthumpthumpthump single bass kick mocking the chugging raging overhead. It's so god damn awesome and headbang inducing. During the middle part of the song, there is full out thrash break intertwined with a slower, chugging breakdown section. These rather blunt, but tight sectional changes are indicative of the entire style of Fueled by Hate, and keep the album from getting repetitive, since most of the songs only have a handful of riffs each. Of course, having most of the songs under or at three minutes helps too. What can I say? Cavemen have short attention spans I guess.

Having just seen Jungle Rot again live after two and a half years, I have to say they are certainly a treat to watch (they deserve a longer set though), and the main man behind the Rot seems like a cool, humble dude. They seem to play "Face Down" a lot live, and it really gets the place moving with its groovy stupidity and lyrical mastery of killing a mofo and just letting him eat MUD (and not the beautiful mangos). I'd also like to apologize right now for this review, because I understand that it's of a very rambling and unorganized nature, but how can you blame me while listening to this knuckle-dragging, club-pounding, face-drooling shit. It's making me forget I even have a name, let alone construct a coherent formulated analysis. And oh yeah, I almost forgot....Fueled by Hate is good, real good....a classic. You should acquire it any way possible, and I mean that, even if that means you need to find the nearest naturally occurring club (aka dead stick fallen from a tree), whack the nearest metalhead with a sizable CD collection in the head and loot him. Hey....survival of the fittest.

Jungle Rot could be seen as an old school death metal equivalent of AC/DC, with the same accusation of releasing the same album over and over. Naturally, for the analogy to hold up, this assertion would have to be seen as overt hyperbole and some accounting of nuances between albums would have to be assumed, lest we become retards who would take this notion literally even when face with the quite different albums that were "Highway To Hell" and "The Razor's Edge". Jungle Rot's 4th opus (one has to count their 1995 demo "Skin The Living" as their 1st full length) doesn't really stand out to the same degree as the technically charged interlude that was AC/DC's early 90s studio excursion next to their 70s catalog, but stands in contrast to its company more in a manner as two different albums from AC/DC's formative years with Bon Scott at the helm would.

In contrast to "Skin The Living" which was a mildly technical endeavor indicative of a strong early Cannibal Corpse influence, and with far less mystique than the powerful follow up that was "Slaughter The Weak", "Fueled By Hate" stands among the plainer albums that this band has offered up. The riff work is quite obvious in its groove influences, though the heavily hardcore based breakdowns that were so blatant on "Dead And Buried" are not quite as heavily emphasized and jarring. This functions more along the lines of a thrashing crossover album after the likes of D.R.I. meets Obituary, all but devoid of any overt technical noodling or intrigue. Apart from a couple of very fleeting lead breaks on "More Demon Souls", this album is devoid of guitar solos and doesn't really even attempt at creating an arrangement where any instruments really stand out to a great degree.

This isn't to say that the album is boring per say, but at times it does get a bit predictable and wears thin before getting to the end, even though the songs are all quite short and well constructed. There are times such as on "Let Them Die" and "Gasping For Air" where the songs function on little more than 2 riffs, and often resort to changing drum beats to differentiate the various song sections. Dave Matrise's vocals are the usual guttural Tardy meets Barnes growls, being intelligible and quite hardcore-like, but also deep and deranged. But what goes on around him is similarly quite rhythmic and predictable, making the listen sound a bit more percussive than melodic, almost to the point of merging into a death n' roll affair. That said, songs like "Symbols Of Hate" and "Fractured" do an excellent job in playing up the faster, thrashing angle and showcase the band able to make their limited 2-4 riff formula work well.

It's definitely a cliché amongst underground death metal fanatics that liking one Jungle Rot album means basically liking all of them, and there is a good amount to like about "Fueled By Hate". Having said that, they were definitely at their strongest in the early days when Jimi Bell was ripping across the fret board and adding a slight technical edge to what is largely a very non-technical, bare bones approach to death metal. Even when dealing with the sort of plain, sponge cake sound that is all too common among death/groove bands, there is a lot to be said for putting some icing on the top to make something that is otherwise a more sugary version of bread more appealing to the taste buds, though I guess a better analogy for a death metal band would be putting the needed maggots on top of the festering corpse that is the skeleton of each song. Whatever works.

At this point there's really no excuse not to know what Jungle Rot sounds like at the very least, and you really should own at least one CD if you like good death metal at all. On the off chance you don't qualify for either of those, they play oldschool death metal with heavy riffs, caveman vocals, and some of the best grooves ever made.

'Fueled By Hate' is, as one would expect, totally more of the same. All Jungle Rot does is release the same album over and over so it should come to no surprise to a prospective listener that this is just as excellent and grooving as every other album they've done. It's totally primitive of course; they haven't developed even remotely since their first release. There's still all these unnecessary leftovers from the death/thrash era like skank beats and thrash breaks, but the emphasis is all on that totally primitive groove. It's an album composed of almost nothing but chugging and growls. If you love caveman riffs you'll love this stuff, it has the same spirit as toughguy hardcore and about the same musical value and expertise too.

So yeah, it's heavy and groovy and stupid as hell. This is good for people who like Six Feet Under but wish they weren't so fancy all the time.