(E1/Shock)

Those wise prophets of musical wit and acerbic pranks at Buddyhead once wrote that Hatebreed made Pantera look like Coltrane, and it goes far further than the musical proficiency and heroin addictions. Forming in 1994, Connecticut’s Hatebreed have watched the words punk and hardcore drift further away from each other until they barely showed a glimmer of their former glory, while the band seemed to realse album after album of meaningless anger and fodder for the sweaty hordes. As a tribute to some of their favourite bands (most of whom, they’ve miraculously outlived), For The Lions is a clutch of covers from landmark thrash, punk and anything else you wanna furiously shake your fist along to. In retrospect, perhaps they should have just written the names of 14 tracks on a piece of paper and posted it on their website, because they certainly didn’t add anything to the songs. There are no dramatic re-imaginings, no surprising choices, just a bunch of note-for-note recreations of Metallica, Bad Brains and Slayer songs. Except that even Tom Araya had two different types of vertebrae tingling screams, where Hatebreed’s Jamey Jasta appears to take pleasure in bludgeoning his fans with a caveman rebel yell. My one round of applause goes to the band for not picking obvious favourites, so it’s Ghosts Of War rather than Raining Blood and Bad Brains’ Supertouch/Shitfit instead of I Against I.

**

MITCH ALEXANDER