King of All Kings

Relatively good reception of "Conquering The Throne" and growing interest in Hate Eternal itself meant that Erik Rutan and the rest of the band on "King Of All Kings" decided not to change the previous style. It was supposed to be similar to the debut album, i.e. mainly morbidish and intense, and the differences - sporadic and without madness. This approach is thrown here even before firing the album, more precisely, from the line-up accompanying Rutan. Because apart from the leader and Jared, the vast majority of them dropped out of the previous line-up, only a new drummer, Derek Roddy, appeared. And - ironically - nothing wrong with that, in such a slightly slimmer line-up was created...as most people believe, one of the best albums that have been released under the Hate Eternal name!

And is it really the best? In my opinion no. At this point, I would be able to point out at least a few other favorites that are quite superior to "King Of All Kings". However, it does not change the fact that this album is another portion of high-level death metal, in the type of what one would expect from Morbid Angel. The general style, ideas, exuberance, all these elements are an extension of "Conquering..." and this style of music is held by Hate Eternal the most. Fortunately, it's also done "with taste" and without unnecessary self-quotes that the whole longplay is perceived only in plus.

At this point, the selection of the best tracks misses the point, as all of them (not including the intros) revolve around heavily blasted death metal. I can indicate "Servants Of The Gods", "Powers That Be", "The Obscure Terror" or "Born By Fire", but I think it's best to check them all. As you might know, fans of melodies, gothic women and folk metal have nothing to look for on "King Of All Kings", they probably will be eliminated in the first seconds of the title track, although those who are excited to play in the style of Morbid Angel, but with small differences and, as such, with their own idea should check the whole album. I don't need to mention the fans of "Conquering The Throne", this position should suit them even more than the previous one.

Originally on: https://subiektywnymetal.blogspot.com/2020/09/hate-eternal-king-of-all-kings-2002.html

Erik Rutan. Derek Roddy. Jared Anderson. A three-man wrecking crew that boldly stated "To preserve the integrity of this record and the musicians who recorded it, there was no editing whatsoever in the making of 'King of All Kings'. We shall raise the standards of Death Metal". A thorough success. "King of All Kings" is a death metal masterwork, and one that deserves an appropriate level of praise as such. Hate Eternal produced their opus early, and it set the bar for all their records afterwards, as well as the records of many others.

While the production may be raw and abrasive on "King of All Kings", it more often than not adds a level of primal animosity to the product. There is no real grey area here: it's a veritable hornets nest of riffs, blasting, roaring vocals, and punching bass. It's outright barbarism. To be completely fair, certain parts can get lost from song to song. There obviously isn't streamlined production here (they made that quite clear themselves), and the hyperspeed chaos they produce from front to back can muddy the proverbial waters. Its been mentioned ad nauseum, but there's more than a few callbacks to Morbid Angel's "Formulas Fatal To The Flesh" here. Just imagine that record smoked a lightbulb and you should be on the right track.

Of the aforementioned riffs, muddy or not, they come in hot and heavy throughout the record. "Servants of the Gods", "Born By Fire", "Rising Legions of Black", and "Powers That Be" are all prime examples of the colossal, low, flat out beefy structure this album exudes. "Powers That Be", for that matter, is the album's highlight for me, bringing all of the best elements of the album and its creators together to close out the album with a full-scale assault on the senses. Meanwhile, songs like the title track, "The Obscure Terror", and "Beyond Redemption" specifically highlight the sheer level of blasting ability Roddy possesses, putting on an absolute clinic of a performance. As cliche as it may be, I cannot stress how mind-blowing the drums are on this record. They've always been Hate Eternal's bread and butter, but they've never struck me on such a "this is ridiculous" mark as they do here. Where death metal of this caliber thrives and survives on blasting more often than not, it's hard to argue that "King of All Kings" doesn't show it off better than most. It's an absolute top-tier performance as a whole, and doubly so in that department.

While this album may not be innovative, it sure is a kick to the teeth. It's the high end of what can be done with just a couple of pissed off dudes who want to play as hard and fast as possible. And to me, there's zero wrong with that. If we started judging every album by that standard, we'd be grasping at straws in no time. "King of All Kings" does what it does without needing to break any sort of mold. It's simple, but it's insane at the same time. They took the basic formula and stretched it to the peak of it's ability to stay as said formula. And I think that helped keep the proverbial "death metal spirit" alive here. They just wanted to make some bone-splitting, soul-burning death metal, and they knocked it out of the park. No looking to the skies for answers, no super deep meanings, no philosophical intricacies to examine at length. Just an in-your-face burning steel hammer pounding your skull into pieces for a little over half an hour. What real metalheads can say no to that?

In the end, "King of All Kings" is a classic, and is a must-listen for any fan of the genre. It's fast, nasty, unapologetic, and doesn't pretend to be something it isn't. Can't beat that. Play loud, play often.

Hate Eternal has channeled all the monstrous lessons Erik Rutan learned during his tenure at Morbid Angel into a project whose infamy for relentless compositions is well-known in the death metal genre. And in some ways, “King of All Kings” may be, more than “Conquering the Throne,” the true start to the band’s discography as Rutan would recruit Derek Roddy, well-known as being one of the few people who can compete with the likes of George Kollias as most likely to draw blood from a drum-kit due to the sheer force of his playing (obviously, this is not to take anything away from the talents of Tim Yeung, though the differences in approach to percussion between “Conquering the Throne” and “King of All Kings" is readily apparent). The sound Roddy brought to the band helped cement the sound HE would become known for – blast-led compositions with disgustingly vast diminished chords and loud, lion-like growls oft-punctuated by harrowing screams. And certainly, considering the similarities in sound between "Conquering the Throne" and Rutan's former band, this ability to create a truly distinctive sound for HE was an important step "King of All Kings" provided.

So if “King of All Kings” truly inaugurated HE’s sound, does it hold up as such an initial statement? Certainly, the one-two punch of the schizophrenic introduction of "Our Beckoning" and the ruthless title track is an effective chokehold on the listener’s throat, and the more slow-building “Obscure Terror” demonstrates a bit more variety compared to the consistently furious title track. By the time the listener has reached the middle of the album it is abundantly clear that the focus on blast-beats will not let up which, depending on your particular disposition, can be a good or bad thing. Certainly, this is a divisive factor in the band’s sound, as it was for many during the early-2000s era of death metal – bands such as Vital Remains suffering from similar criticism.

What I think “King of All Kings” demonstrates, however, is that Rutan is capable of writing absolutely terrifying and very memorable riffs. While this would develop more fully over HE’s discography, even on this album there are many songs that are simply stand out compositions within the death metal genre – the lead riff on “Powers That Be” is a grandiose monster as is the song as a whole, “Servants of the Gods” is an effective composition front-to-back, and certainly, the title track is a crushing, straightforward piece of skullgrinding blast beat nirvana. What perhaps holds this album back the most is a factor that usually does not make or break my enjoyment of an album, but that is the production. Considering how talented a drummer Derek Roddy is, the production should never conceivably inhibit the ability to appreciate his unbelievable talents, but the drums sound absolutely sterile and lifeless throughout the album. Moreover, while "King of All Kings" has some fantastic cuts on it, it does drag near the middle – “Beyond Redemption” and “Born by Fire” are relative duds, certainly not helped by the absolutely forgettable titles of the songs.

So while “King of All Kings” is a solid release, and has several songs on it that have rightly become staples in HE’s live performances, it does not necessarily merit relistening as a totality. What the band has certainly gotten right on this release is that, for the technical prowess of the musicians, the focus is first and foremost on the songs themselves: this is, perhaps not a feast of riffs, but a few choice cuts that are well worth devouring. This is an unforgiving piece of work that does the job of distancing HE’s sound from Morbid Angel’s in a way the predecessor, for this listener at least, did not. While not genre-defying (or, for that matter, defining), its sheer brutality and effectively orchestrated cacophony are enough reason to catalogue this with the other elites of the genre.


74%

As strong as the case might be made that Hate Eternal are naught more than a Morbid Angel derivative featuring a member of that very same act, their Conquering the Throne debut was nonetheless the most exciting new career flagship since the late 80s and early 90s, when the 'core' Florida bands were writing their most potent and lasting materials. Three years later, with an adjusted lineup, Erik Rutan would return with the follow-up, King of All Kings, sporting an Andreas Marschall cover redolent of Blind Guardian's Nightfall in Middle-Earth, production by Rutan himself, and a boast that little to no editing was done during its creation in the studio. The sophomore is a tense, explosive manifestation which follows rather closely in the footsteps of its predecessor, while upping the level of sheer speed and discord woven through the puerile battery.

This is one intense overdose, and the band takes full advantage of percussion mercenary Derek Roddy, who replaces Tim Yeung. King of All Kings is surely one of Roddy's most unrelenting performances, securing his position as an unflinching hired gun across the wide spectrum of extreme metal, shredding out fills nearly as often as Rutan. And speaking of the ex-Ripping Corpse, Morbid Angel speedster, the burden of riffing falls entirely on his shoulders this time out, since Cerrito had also left the band. The result is a mild lack of the preceding album's firm and Faustian structure, replaced by the weaving of entropic threads below Erik's zipping octave rhythms and blustered, processed lead work. It's a fucking tumult, which often suffers from lack of distinction between tracks, but a few of the tracks like "Servants of the Gods" and "In Spirit (The Power of Mana)" show a surprising strength of musicality betwixt the admittedly flashy and ravenous bombardments of "Beyond Redemption", the staggering brutal of a "Chants in Declaration".

The admixture of velocity and taut thrashing execution was something to be feared, even if it does not always produce the most resonant and durable of riffing sequences. King of All Kings is close to an even further hyperized Fatals Formula to the Flesh, or the faster segments of the divisive 1995 Morbid Angel album Domination, and some of my enjoyment of the latter surely bled forth into my appreciation for this. The most destructive of Hate Eternal's full-lengths, if not the best written. Rutan knew his audience and his weaponry well, and brought it to full bearing on the sophomore, but there are stretches of vapid guitar flatulence and dull bludgeoned vocals that fail to overcome the consistency of the debut. Otherwise, this remains one of their strongest albums. There is much to occupy the ear, as you translate Roddy's superhuman applications and Rutan's terse magnificence into a comprehensible, despotic dialect, and surely it's a more tangible and memorable piece than several of its successors.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com

This is the second (and final) Hate Eternal album that you would ever want to own. Coming off of the fairly good 'Conquering The Throne', 'King Of All Kings' is a step down but still solid enough to be listenable, and far, far better than the odious 'I, Monarch'. Note that the first three Hate Eternal albums all feature monarchy references. Not sure what to make of that.

Even on this album you can tell it's the beginning of the end for Hate Eternal; the production has gotten muddier, the riffs are less distinct, and the songwriting gets more repetitive and stale as the album goes on. Still, it's a cut above later material; while all of Hate Eternal's music revolves around the same style of punishing, barbaric death metal, 'King Of All Kings' makes an effort to be more varied from a rhythmic perspective than the blast-saturated 'I, Monarch', which does a great deal to increase its shelf life. While Derek Roddy's performance on this record is far from inspired, it's amazing to see what just changing up the percussion section every once in a while does to the quality of the music.

But perhaps more importantly than that, the riffs have not at this point descended into mind-numbing drudgery. The biggest influences (rather unsurprisingly): Suffocation and Morbid Angel, and the former seems to come out more prominently than on any other Hate Eternal album here, with many technical, claustrophobic chug sections helping to break up the mostly tremolo contributions of Rutan. More importantly, the riffs are audible and pretty memorable a lot of the time; while I don't think there's any one in particular I would herald as a landmark death metal riff, at least I can hear and appreciate them without having to suffer through a haze of unbelievably cloudy, drum-heavy production.

Highlights? Well, the title track is probably the best song in Hate Eternal's catalog, and nearly every other song has at least a couple appreciable moments. The album seems heavily front-loaded; it tends to sort of drag in the second half when the songs become more repetitive and the riffing less involved, and none more nightmarish than on closing track 'Powers That Be' which seriously lasts a fucking lifetime. This album is almost unbearably long at just over a half hour but probably could have been pared down to 20 minutes and still improved.

This isn't as good as 'Conquering The Throne', but it is good, and it's the last good thing Hate Eternal would come to release. If you dug the first album, you'll probably feel this one, and if you like 'I, Monarch' I hate you and I hope a cat sucks the breath out of your newborn.

I bought this album yesterday simply based on reviews both good and bad so I decided to pick it up since I couldn't decide on what other band I could have checked out. So there I am popping this baby in the cd player and as soon as I heard the intro track leading up to the 2nd track I was deeply intrigued by the riffs and especially Roddy's inhuman blast beats I mean damn this guy isn't of this world his drumming may not be nothing new but he's by far THE fastest drummer I've ever heard and I've heard fast before but nothing this quite complex. At first listen I had to disagree with other reviews claiming that the drums drown out the guitar and that the production is muddy but I beg to differ. The drums are toned a bit higher but nothing that distracts the guitar work from the overall song structure and as for the production it's not as bad as others make it out to be althought it is a bit fuzzy at points but for some reason I can decipher every riff found on this album. probably the only complaint I have about this release is the lack of leads and solos on most of the songs. While Rutan is exceptionally a great guitarist he failed to include some nice leads that could have been incorporated in more than just 2 songs. He knows how to shred and it definitely shows in tracks 2 and 3 with some killer solos but the rest of the songs, although not bad in the riffing department, have everything well done but no solos or small leads even.

In spite of some flaws in this album, it is outstanding and is worthy of being checked out sometime

Okay, so i went to Best Buy a while ago, and i was searching for some death metal cd's that i dont have yet. I had heard feedback on Hate Eternal and how they are a very good death metal band started by members of 3 of m top favorite bands (Suffocation, Cannibal Corpse, and Morbid Angel). So I saw "King Of All Kings" there. After looking around somemore, it kept clouding my mind. My intrigue and curiosity on this band was getting stronger. So I picked it up and bought it. After listening to one of the best, straight up creepy intros to a cd in a long time, the title track started playing. And all I could think was, "Oh my fucking God! Why didn't I pick this shit up sooner!?"

After finishing listening to this cd, I quickly popped in my Souls To Deny(Suffocation), Formulas Fatal to the Flesh(MA), and Tomb of the Mutilated(Cannibal Corpse) CD's. After close inspection, i came to the conclusion that although Hate Eternal isn't genre-defining, they are one of the best Death Metal bands out to date. They're innovative style of cross-breeding Cannibal's fathomless growls and hateful screams of terror, Suffocation's brutal guitars, and Morbid Angel's classic, brutal, insane, drums caught my ears andbeat them to a pulp. This entire CD is a brutal, completely antichristian, soundtrack to a slaughter of the human race.

All in all, I cannot put this CD away. During the week I always end up comming back to it and listening to it about 2 times. The only reasong i do not give this CD a 100% is b/c it didn't open the Gates of Hell onto the Earth. I cannot wait to check these guys out in concert. Please, if you get the chance, pick up this cd.

I'm not a big fan of death metal, but I can't seem to find anything wrong with this album (apart from the production); nor can I find anything wrong with Hate Eternal for that matter.

In all honesty, they have to be the best death metal band I've heard.

What we have here is their second album, and it is one very fucking brutal assault.

It starts off with the introduction called "Our Beckoning", which has what seems to be vocals that've been recorded and then reversed. Anyhow, it quickly builds up into a monster of a song; "King Of All Kings".

As other reviewers have stated; the production is kind of muddy. The guitars have a weird.. buzzing sound to them, and are completely drowned out by the drums.. but that's not a bad thing, because the drumming is fucking amazing; fast, and brutal, just the way it should be for a band like this. There are plenty of blastbeats used here, but the riffing is just... riffing. Nothing overly special; however, the riffing on the song "Born By Fire" is, in my opinion, very nice.

This album is pretty good, apart from the fact that it can get quite repetitive.. but for me, all death metal does that.
I highly recommend this album to anyone.

Standout tracks:
King Of All Kings
Born By Fire

And here it is, the much anticipated successor of Hate Eternals’ 1999 debut ‘Conquering The Throne’. An album of which many a fan has already asked himself if this one would be better, faster or more brutal than its’ predecessor.
After barely one session of listening to this CD I realise that those people can rest assured because “King Of All Kings” has become more than a worthy successor.

With a renewed line-up (Erik Rutan, Jared Anderson and drum monster Derek Roddy) Hate Eternal is crushing the better part of the brutal Death Metal bands around under its’ iron shod boot by exalting properties like ‘intensity’ to much higher levels. The combination of blunt speed and alternating, dissonant chords (like we know them from Rutans’ work with Morbid Angel) gives each and every track an explosive charge which speeds through the boundaries of brutality. Just listen to tracks like
“King Of All Kings” and especially “Powers That Be“ and “In Spirit (The Power Of Mana)”, tracks which make you realise that the greater part of the musically related bands around are actually sound pretty lame.

To put it short, “King Of All Kings” has become a musical slaughter, discerning itself in both the lyrical sense as well as compositionwise from the other brutal bands around, making their mark definitively into the elite of nowadays’ Death Metal.
A must have!

Well, to answer this question no, ofcourse not. Not even close. But that doesn’t make them bad. This is their second full-length album, and bands usually change, either becoming better, worse, or generally the same. Hate Eternal, I must say didn’t get that much better...
This is a very harsh death metal album. Constantly there is non-stop guitar and fast drumming and screams. That’s usually what I look for, but they didn’t do it in the greatest way.
Guitarwork on this album is heavy and fast, but also pretty muddy with the production. It drowns out the drums and the vocals, which isn’t good. They are very loud and buzzy, and cant give you a slight earache after a while. But besides the shit production, the tunes are basically brutal and angry.
The vocals of Erik Rutan are just awesome. They are gutteral, and add the to brutality. He can really fucking scream sometimes, such as in the title track “King of All Kings”, towards the end. Though, they are very monotone, and STAY that way, with some minor exceptions.
Of the many drummers out there, I must say Derek Roddy is one of the fastest of “blast-beaters” of them all. Sometimes, like on “Beyond Redemption”, the blasts actually outrun the vocals. It’s somewhat apparent that they can’t keep up with eachother. Though he is an extremely talented drummer, he is quite repetitive. As I recall, 95% of this album is blast beats. I love blast beats, but it just gets very fucking boring after sometime.
Hate Eternal is a combination of 3 talented musicians, but they made a poor attempt in King of All Kings. There are some pretty catchy riffs occasionally, but it is basically 10 tracks of the same. Muddy guitar, monotone vocals, and blast beats, blast beats, and blast beats. If you like generally boring Death Metal, this is the album for you.

This album is a bit on the boarder for me. It has a lot of redeeming qualities about it, but it also has some things about it, which don’t exactly thrill me. As expected from most death metal bands, all of the songs are fast and chaotic (with the exception of the intro track). The whole album has a Morbid Angel feel and sound to it (not surprising, considering Erik was in Morbid Angel). The vocals are your generic low death metal growls and you won’t find Rutan varying his vocal tone very much.

Rutan more or less picks a one-dimensional grow tone (similar to George Fisher from Cannibal Corpse) and goes from there. Occasionally you’ll hear him go into a high pitched scream, so you’re cocked and loaded in the vocal part of it. If the production could be compared to any object, I’d compare it to mud - meaning that it’s very messy, fuzzy, and muddled. For the life of me, I cannot get over that buzz and chugging guitar sound coming from Erik Rutan...it almost sounds like a happy swarm of bees. The music is speedy and crunchy like most death metal along with the vocals - lots of tremolo picking and over used blast beats. Not only that, but almost every song sounds relatively the same in structure.

The structure follows as: tremolo picking, tremolo melody, throw in a kick ass solo, the end. The mix is guitar and drum dominant and you rarely get to hear the bass working in the back. Erik Rutan writes some mesmerizing melodies and solos, but there just isn’t enough variety between songs. Everything is so blatantly similar that it makes it a bit difficult to enjoy. Yeah, Derrick Roddy is an excellent drummer and he can pound like a madman.... and?

Normally I don’t really find drums to be a problem, even if they seem precipitated, but the drumming here is too damn frantic and repetitious. There is little variety in the drum department, a lot of it just seems like random pounding with some blast beats. I love fast and sultry drumming as much as the next guy, but I’d like it to be multifarious as well. Yes, this album is heavy, erratic, and pushy...but it’s much too recursive to give it the luster that you can find in the above average death metal album.

This is a new attempt, but “Conquering The Throne” is a much better album. The guys of Hate Eternal are talented musicians, but this feels like a bit of a cop out. It has potential to be much better than this. I’d say it’s worth downloading at the least, but if you like your death metal extremely recycled then you may enjoy this album.

Hate Eternal delivered another great release with King of All Kings.


Hate Eternal isn't for everyone. Sub Genres exist because people have personal preferences. Hate Eternal has their own unique style of death metal, Nile might be the best band to compare them with.

Jared Anderson plays bass, and does the backing vocals on the album. Jared filled in for Steve Tucker(Morbid Angel) on the Gateways to Annihilation tours in 2001/2002. I highly recommend his side project (Internecine) to all Hate Eternal fans. Similar style, and a damn good album.

Erik Rutan's work in Ripping Corpse early in his music career shows the ability he has on the guitar. Take that, throw in 10 years of working beside the legend himself, Trey Azagthoth,(Morbid Angel) and Hate Eternal is what you get. His lightning fast guitar playing more than makes up for the lack of a rhythm guitar player.

Derek Roddy is arguably the fastest and most talented drummer in metal today. Song after song, pure fucking chaos behind the kit. He never slows down, and he never fails to leave me stunned after a song.


Hate Eternal is one of those bands you need to listen to several times to really understand what they do. I highly recommend this album to death metal fans everywhere.

After listening to King Of All Kings, you can probably say that Hate Eternal has released yet another generic Death Metal album. Standard Death Metal riffing fills the songs, but I do like The Obscure Terror track's riffs. With a couple of cool solos, Hate Eternal shows that not every single second of every track is completely generic. I believe that their is hope for the band, and hopefully they use their potential to release a good album.

If theres one thing not generic about this album, I'd say its the sound of the drums from Derek Roddy. Sure, blastbeats are abundant, but he still makes the drumming of bands like Cannibal Corpse look bad. In Rising Legions of Black, he definetely shows impressive work on the kit. Hopefully the rest of the band will rise up to Roddy's level, have better songwriting, and release a great CD next time around.

Well, sort of. A lot of people aren't crazy apparently about this band, accusing them of being generic and having bad production. Well, they have a point. While I wouldn't necessarily say they're totally generic, the production needs work. You can hear everything clearly, it's not bad production per se, but despite the howling noise, the mix doesn't feel that heavy, if that makes sense. When you put a Meshuggah album on, your chest feels like it's going to cave in. This album's mix is a lot more sterile, despite the brutality at work. However, it has its merits. What we have here is basically brutal death/grind with vocals that are mostly death metal growls with the occasional higher scream on a line or so here and there (which was used more often on their '97 promo, and I like better personally, because it sounds angrier, but anyway), standard death metal riffing, lots of blast beats and lightspeed playing from drum god Derek Roddy, and some gorgeously melodic solos. Seriously, Erik Rutan's solos are ridiculously well-written and memorable, his style of soloing almost comes outta nowhere, as you wouldn't expect it in a death metal band like this. Fantastic guitar solos, look no further than the opening title track (nevermind the useless intro track) for proof of this, they're throughout the cd, very cool stuff. If they could work on their riffing and make it a bit more unique or at least memorable, we'd have an absolute beast on our hands, but as it stands, they're still foaming at the mouth. Sophomore release or not, I still hear huge potential.