Being quite prolific since reforming in 2019, this is the seventh Hate Forest full-length to date and forms the closing part of a trilogy otherwise consisting of previous EPs Sowing With Salt and Justice. And although very much sticking to the deep, dark, barrage of noise and chaos that has been the band's calling card since all the way back in the nineties, the attraction here is that this is the first Hate Forest release with organic drums! Does it make much of a difference? Not really, in all honesty; so overwhelming and bleak is the band's central sound that there's not particular room for the drummer to stand out with frills and fills, which made the programmed drums on previous releases not a problem. So inhuman is this style, so coruscating and full of rage, that all you can really do as a listener is allow your ears to be pinned back, and in that sense this is as solid a Hate Forest experience as ever.

There's a notable extra bit of anger audible here, however, doubtless fuelled by the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, and as such the music has extra bite even when performing as expected. Opener Werewolves, for instance, barrels along enjoyably enough with caustic, frantic violence yet is somewhat repetitive even for Hate Forest. By the time you reach the likes of Mariupol later in the tracklisting however, more air is allowed in the room and touches of melody can be heard here and there. A little does a lot here; the sheer rabidity of Saenko's beast-like snarls generally is spinechilling, yet the brief screams here and there contrast well, as does the more evocative riffing on Coprophagus Empire. Perhaps you could compare such relatively melodic moments to Drudkh's output, yet these Ukrainians have always allowed for overlap between projects both in personnel and sound, and generally this is unmistakable for anything other than Hate Forest.

Which is the blessing and the curse for this, ultimately, as fans will already know what to expect and newcomers will find the band's earlier output to contain far more potent material. Against All Odds even lacks the more epic material from 2020's Hour of the Centaur, which will disappoint some who enjoyed that new melancholic edge to the band's sound. Still, few would deny how crushing and powerful an album this is, destroying the listener's ears from the start with enough flashes of personality shining through (the thrashiness peering through the fog in One Way Ticket, for instance) to keep things fresh enough. Closer Courage, the longest piece present at over six minutes, has something of an atmospheric feel with the way that the near-psychedelic riffs dominate your attention intermittently with the growls, and it finishes the album well. Yet for fans the way that say, Ukranian Thermopylae blasts like a battlefield will be more than compelling and alone enough to make this another must-hear release in itself; war metal!