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DREADFUL FATE
Vengeance

I Hate / To The Death (2018)
Rating: 8/10

With a dry vocal snap akin to Kreator’s Millie Petrozza comes Dreadful Fate’s leader Bestial, for what is the Scandinavian band’s debut full-length release; a sneering and despicable death / thrash attack that will surely get the brain cells short circuiting in no amount of time.

At times one cannot beat a quick shock to the system, which I last experienced fully when the likes of Destruction and the aforementioned Kreator battered us senseless back in the 80s. But every now and then such assaults do occur, and Vengeance does exactly that.

However, before entering this veritable washing machine of thrash I suggest you get online and order yourself a vintage thrash t-shirt, a studded wristband and bullet belt, and then once fully armoured get stuck in to this 26 minute atrocity.

Dreadful Fate caused a slight stir amongst the rats of the Swedish sewers last year with their The Sin Of Sodom demo, so I was rather surprised that they’d got round so quickly to burping this lump out, but when you hear it you’ll be thankful they did. Everything about this zany whippersnapper of a record is rust-coated, but more importantly swift and to the point.

Eight tracks come as a spiky tirade to the senses as more Teutonic worship unfolds. ‘Vengeance’, ‘Death Sentence’ and ‘Eternal Fire’ all run just over two-minutes, while ‘Altar Of Cruelty’ is somewhat a marathon at just over four-minutes. However, everything offered up here has the effect of a spit in the face – nasty, snarling slaps of familiar yet speedy thrash that also stinks of old Sodom, Possessed and Bathory, and that’s down to Death Ripper’s chords of destruction and his compatriots Total Destruction and Corpse Skelethor hammering bass and drum respectively.

In a sense the track titles seem irrelevant as all and sundry are delivered in such a thorny, abrasive hell-torrent that you’ll forget which is which, but you’ll sure as hell know you’ve been whipped up by a sonic metal storm as ‘Witches Hammer’ and ‘Hour Of Reprisal’ provide dirty strikes leaving whelp marks. And in-between and all around the edges there are nods to Slayer as well as Hellhammer and Celtic Frost, and even more so when the band decides to take a breather and chuck in a soiled chug and “ugh” smirk.

Other than that it’s a case of 95% mind clattery, the white-knuckle ride making its last stop at ‘The Final Sacrifice’ before you’re thrown at the wall and your other half or mother is left to clean up the mess.

Dreadful Fate set out to obliterate… mission accomplished then with this razor-sharp and caustic exploration of 80s thrash savagery.

Neil Arnold

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