animate records is a fine, small d.i.y. metal label from germany. they specialised in lovely produced vinyl releases of metal albums that have been long out of print or which didn't even recieve any vinyl treatment in the first place. furthermore they have a good distro of which i ordered a few things in the past. i also call one animate release, in the form of the kataklysm 'shadows and dust' re-issue, my own.
as i recieve the regular animate newsletter i manage to stay informed about new releases. so when i read the newsletter referring to the vinyl release for the 2013 hate album called 'solarflesh: a gospel of radiant divinity', i was quite interested. it was put out on napalm records on cd-only and the description said death metal massacre with a slight oriental edge to it. that sounded good and so i ventured over to the tube to check them out.
after a few tunes i knew that this was right up my alley and when i saw the die-hard version that animate was offering, i was sold. i have listened a fair amount of times to 'solarflesh' by now and can only say it's a brilliant album. sophisticated tech death metal with a pitch black attitude. the oriental instruments and melodies are definitely there and give the whole album a very ominous feeling.
the only problem i have with hate from time to time, is that they sound a lot like behemoth. that feeling only strengthens by the fact that both bands are from poland and have similar stage appearances. both were founded in the early nineties, so they probably influenced each other. anyway, detached from that thought, this album rips from start to finish.
the presentation is a scorcher on its own. the cover is a trifold affair, comes with a super thick spine and looks pretty sharp artwork-wise. the first record, to which the full album is pressed, comes on gorgeous black and white merge with oxblood splatter vinyl. what a beauty. the second disc is actually pretty useless if you look on the content. three bonus tracks with two of them being annoying sound scapes and one real, admittedly good song. but the the screen print looks ace! 100 copies made. animate records. 2016.
