The Rise of Brutality

The Rise of Brutality, released in 2003, is Hatebreed's third album — again through Universal, following Perseverance — and the record that made "Live for This" a signature song. "Live for This" is a declaration that fixes on one reason to keep going. Hatebreed's lyrics are often called self-help, and what makes the words carry is that nothing underneath them ever softens: a chorus you can sing back, over a riff that does not let up. On this album the combination locks together completely. The opening run — "Tear It Down", "Straight to Your Face", "Facing What Consumes You" — is direct-hit writing, each song barely over two minutes. Past "Doomsayer" and "Another Day, Another Vendetta", songs like "A Lesson Lived Is a Lesson Learned" line up around converting experience into instruction. Twelve songs close on "Choose or Be Chosen" and "Confide in No One". It sharpens the method established on the previous record into something shorter and more penetrating, and it draws the line the band has worked to for more than twenty years since.