Fury & Flames

Although the Scandinavian countries have been dominating death metal and black metal for a long time, one shouldn't forget that many of the early death metal bands came out of the United States -- and one of North America's extreme metal pioneers was Erik Rutan, who was playing death metal and grindcore in the band Ripping Corpse as early as 1987 and continued in that vein in the '90s and 2000s with Hate Eternal -- all of which in addition to his contributions to Morbid Angel.

If you were like me, wondering where HATE ETERNAL would go after its musically diverse album in "I, Monarch" (the last for Earache) and basically assumed that the fourth effort, "Fury & Flames" (the first for Metal Blade) would continue in that direction, then you'd be dead wrong. The path follo...