All those of you who were a little worried and expected HATE ETERNAL to slow down on the follow-up to their highly acclaimed debut “Conquering The Throne” can relax again. Erik Rutan and the boys have by no means become slaves to the mainstream – they’re actually almost more uncompromising and deadly than ever before! “King Of All Kings” is another highspeed Death Metal inferno that mixes the brutal furiosity of KRISIUN with the technical brilliance of MORBID ANGEL and will prove all those critics ad absurdum who considered HATE ETERNAL just a superfluous side project with no real substance in the long run. That these guys are far more than just that became quite clear pretty quickly. With the release of their debut back in 1999 they immediately set new standards within the Death Metal genre, not only resulting in the change of label (from the Earache sub-division Wicked World to Earache directly) for this new offering, but also in the fact that all of a sudden countless soundalikes were popping up everywhere. But most of them were simply lacking the technical abilities of Erik Rutan, Jared Anderson and Derek Roddy. HATE ETERNAL is brutal Death Metal in perfection and “King Of All Kings” has become another prove of that! The intensity of “King Of All Kings” is simply amazing and considering the extreme speed on the whole record, the overall tightness of the band just unbelievable! There’s no real standout track as all nine new tracks (plus intro) are of equal top notch quality (same goes for Rutan’s once again totally conving production)… So, my only complain is addressed to the choice of the album’s cover, which despite it’s obvious artwork qualities, reminds me way too much on the album sleeves by Sweden’s “Metal” wimps HAMMERFALL… Apart from that – an incredible follow-up!