Already formed in 1993, Italy’s Handful Of Hate is a long-time running black metal band. The band has released four full length records, three EPs and one demo to date and now they return with their fifth full length entitled You Will Bleed. I personally had no prior knowledge of this band, so I stepped into their evil world quite blindly. Follow me as I guide you through their story.

Personally I get drawn more and more into the world of black metal with every release I review and every band I see perform. As long as it’s good of course. Luckily Handful Of Hate proves to be an excellent black metal band. The atmosphere they create with their raw yet clear recorded album is true to the scene, yet not too exaggerated. The songs they play vary from slow parts to mid-tempo to up-tempo to fast blasting, creating a lot of dynamics within the songs themselves. Also the riffs they play are quite, how to put this delicately, catchy I might say. It didn’t take me a whole lot of spins to be humming along to most of the songs, which I think is a good thing within a sometimes quite monotonous style like black metal. Last point of praising, I really like the weird things they occasionally do on the guitars and bass. Listen to the record and you’ll immediately understand what I mean.

 

Well, I have to say that this is actually one of the finest black metal records I’ve heard in a long time. I recommend all fans of the style to check them out and even fans of death metal might enjoy You Will Bleed from time to time.