I don’t totally hate the new album from Germany’s Total Hate, but I do get a bit fed up by the band’s sometime reliance on the easy way out when they are so obviously capable of so much more.

For instance, the best song on their new album, Forthcoming Age of the Reaper, a blazing piece of high end mayhem that goes by the name of Looming Age of the Vermin King, is right up there with the best black metal you’ll have heard in 2024. The ebbs and flows of the song’s structure show that the band know how to put together really classy material, with drummer Serrator driving everything with a swing and solidity that really stands out.

The trouble is, they can’t maintain this level of class through the rest of the album, relying too often on general issue sturm und drang to get the job done, meaning that a good half of the material here becomes little more than black metal background music for your next Satanic dinner party.

But let’s try and concentrate on the positives; …Vermin King aside, Burn With Your Prophet is also pretty impressive. Adrastos runs a nice line in uncompromising, unhinged vocal violence, and Abortio‘s buzzsaw four string technique has that nice chaotic punk edge that I like to hear on material like this. Similarly Czernobog and Goathammer‘s guitar partnership has an unyielding bluntness that injects just enough melody into the menace to keep things moving along nicely. This track will be a live fave, I’m sure, as will the frantic Death, Hate, Eradicate, which is another impressive headbanger.

At the end of the day, six full lengths in to their career, I’m sure Total Hate feel they’ve found their place in the grand scheme of things and feel no need to tread new ground. They almost certainly won’t give a tinker’s cuss what I think about their album either, and good luck to them. It’s just those tantalising flashes of brilliance that whet the appetite keep making me think just how good they could be, given a following wind and a bit of time…

Forthcoming Age of the Reaper is out now.