Hatebreed

A complete covers album is usually geared for a band’s diehard fans who possess collector mentalities. In all fairness, a renditions collection is also a perfect opportunity to illustrate a band's overt and not-so-obvious influences. It’s a chance for a band to have some fun in the studio environment. Sometimes, these efforts can reek of “contractual obligation," or they act as a ploy to tide over fans while bands work on new material. In essence, a covers album is often a crap shoot for the band and fans.

For Connecticut hardcore superstars Hatebreed , For the Lions, their first all-covers album, serves the first two the aforementioned masters. Fans will relish the 'Breed's take on seminal metal and hardcore bands; the band did not make any surprising choices pertaining to which bands to re-imagine. It makes total sense that the band would offer their take on their influences, such as Suicidal Tendencies, Sick of it All, Slayer and Sepultura. There’s no shock there.

However, while Hatebreed selected bands that are easily detectable as inspiration, they do shake things up a bit, thanks to their uncommon song choices. Rather than re-doing the hits or “classics,” they went with deeper cuts. For the Lions is a sonic treat for crusty HxCx fans and older school metalheads who are somewhat interested in a newer school band providing their interpretation and putting their stamp on the tunes we all know and love.

This covers release also inspires because the band pushes itself to try new things, rather than just Hatebreedize songs they didn't write. It may very well be an effort to tide fans over while the band works on new material, but it doesn’t come across as something the band “needed” to in order to fulfill their end of a record label deal.

— Amy Sciarretto
05.17.09

The terms metalcore, hardcore, punk metal, and death metal have all been applied at one time or another to New Haven, CT-based Hatebreed, but it was a shared love of all things punk rock that served as the impetus for the band's inception in the early '90s. That's not to say that the 18 covers that make up For the Lions are tapped squarely from the vein of punk history, but at least they finally got around to covering the classic Misfits song from which they derived their name. Like an LP version of Metallica's 1987 $5.98 E.P.: Garage Days Re-Revisited, For the Lions is a love letter to the bands and songs that inspired the group, which means that all of the previously mentioned genres are more or less represented. The band sounds the most engaged on the early hardcore numbers like "Suicidal Maniac" (Suicidal Tendencies), "Thirsty and Miserable" (Black Flag), and "It's the Limit" (Cro-Mags), while nods to the metal gods such as "Ghosts of War" (Slayer) and "Escape" (Metallica) are blistering and volatile enough to warrant inclusion, but feel a little rote. ~ James Christopher Monger, Rovi