HANDFUL OF HATE started in 1993 and "You Will Bleed" is their fifth so far album. I followed them for several years and truth is that 'till now they have not released something that left me totally satisfied. The previous CD, "Gruesome Splendour", was definitely their musical peak followed (for me) with a very good live gig in Athens but even that album had many parts that could easily make you feel tired. Although it had very powerful and aggressive songs, its incongruity was the reason for losing some points.

The Italians, at least from "Vicecrown" CDand afterwards, play a Black-meets-Death Metl style giving much attention to razor sharpened guitars. They have a good technique in a way that a lot of multi-diversity parts can be found inside their songs. Not something extraordinary, though, with a couple being good and the majority in mediocre levels but at least standing with dignity.

In this new album, besides the new lineup (basically only the mainman Nicola Bianchi has remained - for a while the band had split up), HANDFUL OF HATE continues in the fields they had stopped with the previous two full-length albums although I don't believe that "You Will Bleed" succeeds in overlapping "Gruesome Splendour". Once more we have a lot of GORGOROTH influences, some very powerful riffing close to SLAYER played by a Death Metal band but in the end it's very difficult for something to remain or have your attention. Their Black Metal style, as I see it, aims mostly to a headbanging pleasure or is gig-based if you wish to remove yourself from any fantasy or atmospheric (with the good meaning) creation. Even their lyrical concept found behind with all these sadism, fetishism, torturing and total sexual pleasure cannot be followed or find the appropriate extreme musical recipe.

But the basic minus in HANDFUL OF HATE here is not only this. The music that sounds indifferently, so trite and without a depth are the facts making "You Will Bleed" at least uninteresting. I hope they will use their instrumental skills into something more meaningful next time.