Moloch Letalis / Hate Them All - Czara śmierci

MOLOCH LETALIS / HATE THEM ALL - Czara śmierci (OLD TEMPLE - Split CD 2013)

“Czara śmierci” is a split CD between two Polish bands: Moloch Letalis and Hate Them All. I suppose that both acts won’t be familiar for many of you, especially if you’re a foreign reader – HTA has only a couple of demos and splits in their discography, but all were low budget releases and Moloch Letalis (who in their early stage were simply called Moloch) have one album plus several demos and 7”EP, but I doubt that any of these releases had a big impact on the underground extreme metal movement. They both are just very underground bands, to say it simply. And well, personally I cannot say that I am a fan of their music. I know Hate Them All only slightly, with few songs, but their music never impressed me. And with Moloch Letalis it’s pretty much the same. I used to have their two demos (one released as Moloch), but I have considered them to be just mediocre band and then when they changed the name for the current one and released “Cold Execution” I again felt like this is nothing extraordinary… fine, but not something truly earthshaking. So I intentionally just skipped their album “Apoteoza śmierci” and “Czeluść” EP. I never felt an urge to buy these recordings and listen to them, you know…? I would probably still be skipping Moloch Letalis music, if I didn’t get “Czara śmierci” for review.

And well, when I listen to “Czara śmierci” my opinion on both bands doesn’t change so much… I still think that Hate Them All is nothing truly interesting, and Moloch Letalis is only a mediocre band, but certainly the latter did improve a lot since the last time I’ve listened to them. And if they get better and better then it is something positive, I suppose. Definitely I can see that Moloch Letalis has progressed a lot since their demo days and now are actually quite good band. They perform some sort of rough black / death metal; nothing too original or imaginative, but just solid and good stuff, with some really nice riffs and overall I think I can say that I liked their part of the split. It may be nothing to really be excited about, but certainly a decent effort. I still miss something in their music though – I mean it tends to get dull here and there, it’s not powerful enough and it won’t break the bones... The band needs to fuel their music a little bit more, maybe get more violent, I don’t know… it just has this tendency to sound unimpressive here and there and then it gets boring, but still such songs as “Sex-Mag” are really, really fine. I also like “Plugawy pakt” and “Skrzydła śmierci”, which have nice feeling and sound really grim. Four songs in total, so yeah… I wrote that Moloch Letalis is rather mediocre band in general, but I guess that I can still recommend them to all underground death / black metal maniacs, if you’re looking for something new... but don’t expect to hear something spectacular.

And Hate Them All... well, I am not scared of their raw rehearsal production, but I just really feel not impressed by the music. It is primitive – and again, there’s nothing wrong in playing simple, primitive music… but I just cannot say that HTA plays anything good at all. Few riffs, which I liked, won’t make their part of the split interesting. In general their music sounds a little bit like some of the recent Darkthrone albums, with that punkish or even rot’n’roll feeling, mixed with very simple, very traditional black metal. Some songs are quite catchy and basically there would be nothing wrong in it, if it wasn’t for the fact that I simply don’t feel too enthusiastic about it. For instance I don’t like the vocals so much… Eh, I won’t write too much about it... I assume that my description of Hate Them All music is enough. There are seven songs, including Motorhead cover, if you want to know.

Final rate: 60/100