Band:	Gorevent
Album:	Fate
Style:	Brutal death metal
Release date:	February 2020

01. Confront
02. Justice
03. Keep It Tightening
04. Swell
05. Energies
06. Round 13
07. Fate
08. Day To Head

Just because nobody expects you to reinvent the wheel doesn't mean you shouldn't try.

The brutal death metal scene in Japan is wildly varied both in terms of style as well as quality, ranging from the otherworldly technical aficionados in Desecravity to the mind-numbing machine known as Pukelization -- a name to impress your high school buddies if there ever was one. Gorevent fall somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, without any unique or special traits to set them apart from the sea of slambois across the globe, but also not so terrible that it makes for a libelous review of comedic proportions.

Having tinkered with their sound ever so slightly throughout their relatively samey discography, Fate is perhaps the most rounded release from the band to date. Touches of its less extreme parent genre permeate the album, restricting the full-on senseless brutality often expressed through this type of music. This almost "soft" approach is buoyed by a much improved production value that offers a significant increase in breathing room for each instrument, eradicating the annoying tin can sound of the drums to better suit the album's relentlessly crushing nature. Your ears are even graced with the sounds of some cascading cymbal work in the background, adding to the overall playful vibe. Of course, the chugging guitar assault is to be expected, but the chunky riffs and garbled pitched growls ensure the sense of fun is maintained from start to finish. Fate, as it turns out, is by no means a wine-and-dine experience.

Though signs of growth are blatant, it's still a somewhat safe release in that each song tends to follow a fairly generic approach to the slam cycle and never ventures outside the realm of simplicity. There's nothing offensively bad about it or deserving of complete ridicule, but it would have been a more enjoyable experience had the riffs extended beyond introductory level riff monotony. Also, if vocalist Gokucho threw in a random high note or two just to keep the tedium from really setting in, that would have gone a long way in helping entice their audience to overlook the waning quality in songwriting towards the album's end, where it starts to come across as somewhat of a chore for the band, as if they're trying to reach the finish line rather than writing from a creative headspace. The repetition of the songs becomes more burdensome for the listener to trudge through, which decreases Fate's replay value substantially. So, while far from a perfect or even great slam release, Gorevent have at least managed to offer up a decent piece of one-off mild brutality for the slam completionist out there.