* En anglais uniquement
Hate Eternal are an uncompromising, ultra-fast death metal/grindcore band led by former
Morbid Angel and
Ripping Corpse guitarist
Erik Rutan. Building off of a foundation put down by Floridian death metal pioneers like
Death and
Obituary, the band emerged in the late 1990s with a technically complex take on the genre, an esthetic that they perfected on standout LPs like
Fury and Flames (2008),
Phoenix Amongst the Ashes (2011), and
Infernus (2015).
Hate Eternal presented a change for
Rutan in that the group found him doing much of the lead singing in addition to playing guitar. Nonetheless,
Hate Eternal's late-'90s material was quite similar to the type of things that
Rutan had done in the past. With
Rutan having recruited fellow guitarist
Doug Cerrito (formerly of
Suffocation), bassist Jared Anderson, and drummer
Tim Yeung,
Hate Eternal signed with Wicked World in 1999 and recorded their first album,
Conquering the Throne. Shortly afterward,
Yeung was replaced by Derek Roddy and
Rutan left
Morbid Angel to focus on
Hate Eternal, and in 2002 the band released its second album,
King of All Kings, on Earache.
Hate Eternal set out on tour to promote the album, but quickly ran into trouble when they had to replace Jared Anderson with
Randy Piro due to a drug problem. In 2005, the band returned with its third album,
I, Monarch. While the album was met with favorable reviews by critics, the band suffered from internal problems and had to cancel its touring, with Roddy leaving the group in 2006.
Rutan recruited drummer Jade Simonetto to replace him the following year, and the band got back to recording, releasing the triumphant
Fury and Flames on Metal Blade in 2008, which became their highest-charting LP to date. Two years later,
Piro was replaced by bassist
J.J. Hrubovcak just before the band went into the studio to begin work on its fifth album,
Phoenix Amongst the Ashes, which was released in early 2011 and reached number 18 on the U.S. Heatseekers chart. The band moved to Season of Mist for their sixth studio long player, 2015's punishing
Infernus, which marked the debut of drummer Chason Westmoreland from
Burning the Masses. Westmoreland left the fold shortly after the album's release, and was replaced by
Hannes Grossmann (
Blotted Science,
Necrophagist), who made his first studio appearance on 2018's
Upon Desolate Sands. ~ Alex Henderson