Hate Field: Split Views From The East

Syria’s View By Sam

Hate Field, with their amazing release of “Scary Fairy Tale,” definitely kicked it off. The album is generally well-mixed and the concept is extremely appealing, the thought of mixing industrial metal and Middle Eastern folk tunes is quite genuine of an approach to originality.

I believe this release would please fans of melodic death metal, industrial metal, and Middle Eastern music alike, for it combines them in the best way possible.

Vocals are generally good, with nice alternating between the harsh extreme vocals and clean vocals. It gives a great sense of strength and shows the dedication to all the parts of their sub-genre along with the astonishingly-played fast riffs on the guitars. All topped with fairly good Middle Eastern trance beats. To me, it was quite addictive at the time and it makes you crave more of their works.

However, I must mention that the trance beats are just a bit over-the-top and would rather if there was less of them, or perhaps combined more with the music. On a very personal approach, I believe it was a decent release by a newly formed band and success is approaching them slowly, totally a must listen album by a great band.

Egypt’s View By Shehab El-Din Ismail

Rising from Alexandria, and from a strong background in Odious, Alfi Hayati decided to start his own band, Hate Field. “Scary Fairy Tale” is the debut album. It is also worthy to note that this album in its totality was perceived, composed and executed by Alfi. A very good effort indeed.

The album consists of 10 tracks and was released under the indie label, Domestic Genocide. The album is considered to be industrial metal and is heavily influenced by Metallica and Rammstein.

The tracks musically take you from one mood to the other, the album is heavily based on rhythm guitar riffs and, for some songs, an oriental overall feel is there (e.g. “Sweet Nightmare”) while other tracks have electronic notes well employed (e.g. “Deadly Supafly”). Though the influences of the artist are persistent throughout the full album, the music is definitely original, interesting and worth listening to. Alfi succeeded in a very hard task, which is using his influences, skills and resources to create something original without at all “copycatting”. This album is also very accessible, which means you can digest it after a couple of listens or so. It is not as complicated as other albums, which is a good thing because you won’t take a lot of time diving through it. The ride isn’t going to be that hard and that could be bad thing because it might “wear out” after a while, only time will tell though.

The production is pretty decent as well. A drum machine is very well employed. Some of the parts have the rhythm guitar sounding “far” like “Sweet Nightmare,” I am unsure whether this was intended or if it’s a production glitch but it is not that noticeable anyway.

Alfi’s clean vocal performance is very, very good if not excellent, but the growl parts need development. Most of the album features clean singing but the growling is persistent, an example being the “Scary Fairytale” track which is sung all in growls.

The lyrics are driven from the same source (personal experience), though it isn’t considered a concept album; the lyrics are all themed similarly thus lacking variety. The lyrical content is very heart-felt and is based on sorrow, revenge, and confrontation.

Highlights from this album: “Sweet Nightmare,” “Deadly Supafly,” “Maybe in Another Life,” “New Born’s Army,” “Scary Fairytale,” “After Storm”.

Overall, this album is a great effort, sounding very fresh and takes you to a different musical journey. So, if you are a fan of heavy or industrial metal, if you love Metallica or Rammstein, this is definitely for you.

You can buy and stream the album here.