It’s come to something when you utterly fail to feel ‘down with the kids’ at age 23. Sacramento-based Fate came together in the 2003, when they were zygotes, and, having got the obligatory self-released EP out of the way, were snapped up by Metal Blade shortly after learning to crawl. “Vultures” is the debut full-length following on the back of that partnership; half an hour of punchy, crunchy, often technical ‘modern’ death metal, neatly packaged, performed with surprising talent by a band whose average age only just scrapes 20.
If an act is to be successful in this style, which many would straightforwardly label metalcore, there needs to be an exciting and coherent combination of elements. On “Vultures” the shred is not lacking; Fate list themselves as a ‘death thrash’ band, and certainly bring the flavour of both genres into play with the mean, pulverising riffs on “Your Creed is Greed” and “Of Riddance and Innocence”. Furthermore, whilst the mellifluous punch of the title track might be straight outta Sweden, the sheer weight of the guitar work on, for example, “Harrowing Infidelity”, has a more classic USDM sound, which is pleasing. Justin’s vocals bring an aura of deathy simplicity to proceedings, and they, along with the poised aggression and for-the-throat brevity of the album, show that Fate grew up with hardcore as a bosom buddy.
The sweeter juxtaposition is handled quite well too; whilst the shift to a clean, mellow, meandering guitar half-way through “Battle Grounds Beneath My Feet” isn’t entirely convincing in terms of song structure, it hints at a talent for real rather than contrived beauty that could be worked on to drag Fate’s sound further away from the norm. More interesting are the moments of melody that work against the brutality in the main sections of songs, for example on “Your Creed Is Greed”, where a memorable, fluent melody works underneath the twisting crunch of the riffwork so that they seem sewn together.
This coherence is not entirely characteristic of the album as a whole, and even from the word go, on “Psychopathic Diary”, there is a sense of things just not fitting together quite right. In addition, it is on the title track, with its over-clean leads and generic metalcore riffs that the band sound really comfortable in their song-writing- perhaps forgivably, but the songs with a better mix of the brutal and the fashionable are the ones that will draw wide interest, and I hope it is in this more complex direction that the band will travel. Once they’re fully grown, Fate have years to hone their style. As musicians they’re too good to be generic, so it would be great to see them bust out of the box even more.
http://www.myspace.com/fate
http://www.metalblade.com
