Supremacy

Supremacy, released by Roadrunner Records in July 2006, is Hatebreed's fourth album, arriving three years after The Rise of Brutality in the period when the band reached furthest through major distribution. "Destroy Everything" is the song the record is known by, and it has stayed at the centre of the live set ever since. It is not a simple declaration of destruction but the most direct statement of a subject the band returns to: tear the thing down once, then rebuild it. From the opening "Defeatist" through "Horrors of Self", "Mind Over All" and "To the Threshold", the first half is titled almost entirely from the inside. Defeatism, self-loathing, and getting past both by will — the fact that the lyrics take the self rather than an enemy as their object explains who the supremacy of the title is over. The closing "Supremacy of Self" names it outright. "Divine Judgment", "Immortal Enemies", "Never Let It Die" and "As Diehard As They Come" keep thirteen songs moving at speed. Length and structure are both held in check, and the craft of making a whole album work inside forty minutes is already complete here.