ALBUM REVIEW: Hategod Triumph – Creeping Fear

Extreme metal in France is enjoying a wonderful wave of quality in the underground just now. Though it’s the black metal scene dominating most of the attention, you’d be a fool to overlook what’s going on with French death metal at the moment. Hailing from just outside of Paris, it’s been four long years since CREEPING FEAR released their debut album, Onward To Apocalypse – a solid slab of death metal, but unlikely to set the world afire. Now the Frenchmen are back with their long-awaited follow up: Hategod Triumph. But with death metal enjoying its strongest period in history, are CREEPING FEAR worthy of your attention? 

Haunted tones open up proceedings, though it doesn’t take long for Collapse to descend into a flurry of double bass and aggressive, buzzsaw riffing. Demonic is a word often thrown around when discussing death metal vocals, but that really is the only way to describe deep gutturals of Clément Ducouret – it’s a real stand out aspect of CREEPING FEAR‘s arsenal for much of the record, though at times the lack in tonal variation does hamper the band.

Hate Crush Consume and Deceitful Tongues follow in a similar fashion, delivering solid – if maybe a touch unremarkable – barrages of aggression and speed, with some chaotic solo work and low-and-slow tempo changes to keep things interesting before title track Hategod Triumph brings a searing display of dominance. More atmospheric than any of the preceding offerings, the six minute bruiser shows just how strong CREEPING FEAR can be when they give themselves a bit more time and space to develop their ideas. The urgency and grooves work wonderfully in tandem rather than against each other, and there’s a lovely blackened touch to the riff-work throughout. It’s taken them a few tracks to get going, but when they finally hit their stride CREEPING FEAR deliver excellence.

Into Side B of Hategod Triumph, and CREEPING FEAR keep that momentum rolling. Wearing the Skin of Wicked toys with tempos with ease, the rapid-fire opening moments making way for a stomping groove before returning to blitzkrieg riffing – one of the stronger moments from the record, it ticks all the boxes; infectious when offering a mid-tempo stomp, eviscerating when degenerating into a whirlwind of aggression, and the solo work is some of the best on offer throughout Hategod Triumph, but you can’t help but feel there’s a little je ne sais quoi missing.

From there, CREEPING FEAR progress towards the end of Hategod Triumph in typically solid form. We Belong In the Crypts is a textbook example of modern death metal, a beefy rager with no real negatives but, as seems to be the theme of the record, few sparks of real excellence either. Penultimate offering Summoned in Hellfire’s Blood is something a little different, though. Borderline death/doom for much of its run time, there’s a nigh impenetrable murk lying over the track, a grim atmosphere that doesn’t envelope the listener so much as it drowns them, while the faster sections bring a serious sense of unease and urgency. Closer From Wombs to the Battlefield continues the higher quality ending to Hategod Triumph, once more delving into a brand of organised chaos that is unmatched when they do it right.

There’s a lot of solid work throughout Hategod Triumph, some of it even pushing into brilliance, but with so many incredible death metal albums having dropped so far this year, and with many more to come, you can’t help but wonder whether CREEPING FEAR will get lost in the noise. However there’s no getting away from the fact that this isn’t so much of a step in the right direction rather than a quantum leap of improvement from Onwards To Apocalypse, and a very promising sign of what’s to come from the future of French death metal.

Rating: 7/10

Hategod Triumph is out now via Dolorem Records.

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