AN NCS PREMIERE: CRUEL FATE — “DESCENTE AUX ENFERS”

The name of the song you’re about to hear is “Descente aux Enfers“, which translates to “descent into hell”. The Canadian death metal band Cruel Fate, who included the song in their forthcoming second album Destin Cruel, chose the title well, for it truly is a descent into the realms of Inferno.

The song is less than four minutes long, but Cruel Fate still make it a journey, with each stage of the descent capturing a different manifestation of hellish horrors, all the while shaking and bludgeoning the listener like a ragged toy in the grasp of a demonic child.

In the first stage of the song the drums manically snap like gnashing teeth while the riffing swarms — rising, falling, and writhing in feverish yet abysmal tones, segmented by equally ugly chords that sound like horrid moans, while the words are being ejected in monstrous, belly-deep growls.

All those sensations seem to channel both frenzied cruelty and abject agony, but in the song’s second phase, announced by a booming percussive avalanche, the tempo shifts, the riffing slashes and churns, and the vocals rise up in livid howls and yells. It sounds like a demolition machine chewing through a mass of metal, even more cruel and destructive than before.

And then the drums accelerate into a hammering frenzy, the guitars begin boiling in derangement, and the vocals scream. With tumbling and rumbling drums providing another bridge, the song changes again, and the music sounds haughty and imperious, like a blood-freezing procession for the lords of Hades, with the hard-slugging bass providing a merciless stomp.

 

 

Just that one song tells you a lot of what you need to know about the punishing might, the merciless savagery, and the hellish hookiness of Cruel Fate‘s brand of death metal, which justly draws references to the likes of ’90s greats such as Unleashed, Grave, Benediction, and Bolt Thrower.

But it doesn’t tell you everything. The album’s previously released title song, for example, sounds like a jolting tank attack, the guitars and bass pumping like giant pistons driving some immense war machine marauding through a wasteland of its own making, urged on by the howls and roars of a monstrous commander.

This song also reveals the dynamism of Cruel Fate‘s songcraft. While at its core it’s a spine-smashing hammerfest, it also changes tempos and brings in sensations of dismal abomination as well as furious killing rage. It’s also a strong candidate for a year-end list we compile whose principal criterion is… infectiousness.

 

 

And, well, there’s still more to come, but these two songs alone are damned convincing proof that Cruel Fate’s new album will be a powerhouse of death metal devastation that shouldn’t be missed.

Destin Cruel will be released internationally by the always interesting Personal Records on November 17th, on CD and digital formats.

PRE-ORDER:
https://www.personal-records.com/product/pre-order-cruel-fate-destin-cruel/
https://personal-records.bandcamp.com/album/destin-cruel

CRUEL FATE:
https://www.facebook.com/cruelfateottawa