Sorrow - Hatred and Disgust

SORROW - Hatred and Disgust (ROADRUNNER Records CD 1992)

In case you have never heard about Sorrow before, let me say that this band was formed back in 1988 under the name Apparition. As Apparition they recorded a couple of demo tapes (including "Human Fear" demo) and one single "Eternally Forgotten / Curse the Sunrise" in 1990 (for Relapse Records), after which they changed the moniker for Sorrow. Sorrow was shortly lived entity unfortunately and split up already in 1993 - luckily there's no sign of potential reunion, which is a curse among so many old bands nowadays. What Sorrow left behind was "Forgotten Sunrise" EP and "Hatred and Disgust" album. The latter, released in 1992 by Roadrunner Records, seems like slightly forgotten album, don't you think? It would seem that Sorrow had everything within their reach to become popular and big death metal band. They started to record at the highlight of death metal popularity ad got signed to the label, which was also home to some of the biggest names in history - such as Obituary, Death, Deicide, Gorguts, Malevolent Creation and so on. But when you give one listen to either "Forgotten Sunrise" or "Hatred and Disgust" you could quickly hear why Sorrow never has reached the status of these other bands that I just mentioned. Their music wasn't just quite as good as some other records of that time. I'm not saying it was terrible or unlistenable, but it just wasn't the best quality death metal of the old era. Still, it's good and worthy enough to have both CDs in your collection, it's worthy to give them spontaneous and occasional listen once every few years... and it's always cool to save it from being forgotten.

When compared to "Forgotten Sunrise", Sorrow added a second guitarist to their line up. But I cannot say that this more complete line up had any strong impact on how the music sounds. It still is quite simplistic, not overly technical death metal, with a strong doomy vibe, which dominates throughout every song. In many ways I see "Hatred and Disgust" as less impressive and quite slowed down, lazy version of "Leprosy". But not only it lacks the genius of Death riffage or impressive leads, but also the powerful and crushing production, which would help the songs to have massive influence on the listener.

I like quite few of these riffs, I don't even mind that slow pace, which Sorrow seems to be most fond of. Faster section appear in every song, sometimes can even be dominating (like in "Forced Repression") but generally I like how diversity between the tempo changes and riff style has been done here. And songs like "Separative Adjectives" really do sound great and let me think that there was a lot of potential in Sorrow. But the band was dead soon after the album saw the light of the day…

Standout tracks: "Forced Repression", "Separative Adjectives"

Verdict: 70/100