MADE OF HATE, Bullet in Your Head (2008, AFM)

The skull:
Welcome, friends, to the album cover motif that never ends. Made of Hate play melodic death metal in the Children of Bodom vein, but this album cover design looks like that popularized by Hatebreed and the like. And we can go back further, sifting through the catalogs of the Victory, Equal Vision and Facebown labels to find more examples of this sort of thing. Very tattoo-y, this particular cover finds a skull comin’ out swingin’, packin’ heat where ears used to be (a bullet hole in the forehead adds insult to injury). Blood spatter forms a background, and the literal interpretation of the album title is duly noted. [Note: the band used to be known as Archeon, whose only album, End of the Weakness, features a skull on the cover that currently resides in BDS’s Honorary Mentions wing. We hail these Poles for their commitment to the skull.]

The music:
Man, from the album artwork right down to the band name itself, these guys are sending all kinds of mixed signals. As noted above, they present themselves as a straight up traditional hardcore band but sound a lot like Children of Bodom, complete with flashy lead guitar work. Were I an enthusiast of modern melodic death metal, I’d be scared away by their imagery. But what about the music itself? It’s more than competent in the area of performance, and well-written enough too. The vocals are scathing in the textbook melo-death mold, the melodies are Iron Maiden on amphetamine, the drums are robotic but with nimble fills…par for the course and as generic as most other bands of this type. They’ll be loved by fans who dig this style and don’t demand any sort of originality.
— Friar Wagner