Review by Greg on December 27, 2025.

Man, sometimes less is really more. Look at that artwork, impressive in its blunt, black-and-white approach. It also comes with a killer title: The Sound of Modern Hate is the first full-length by Massachusetts crossover oddities Kevorkian's Angels.

Okay, so, it's a crossover, alright – but likely not what you're expecting. We're in 2003, and no oversaturation of the scene had occurred yet. Indeed, what we have here is grimy, lo-fi, and really on the crust punk side of things, driven by a drummer more or less constantly set in blast-beat mode. The risk of it resulting in a flurry of tracks that whiz by in a haze is obvious, and transposing the formula to longer tracks doesn't always yield great results (like on the killer 'Lacerate', which, however, meanders a bit too much in the middle). That said, Kevorkian's Angels do occasionally go beyond that: once you get to 'Eat Shit', you're met with a disturbing, hopeless midtempo track, where the vocals are no more than a distant hiss, and the following 'Without the Shadow of a Trace' has, I swear, more in common with R.I.P.-era Coroner than anything else – seriously, listen to that acrobatic riff set, and there's even a guitar solo, albeit certainly not up to Tommy Vetterli standards, but nevertheless a nice feature. Other highlights include the quasi-melodic intro of 'The Cycle', which almost makes one expect an instrumental (for sure, it would have made no sense but then again, every song is unpredictable in its own way), the vile blackened leanings of 'The Ones You Forgot', the cover of Jerry's Kids' 'Back Off' which is executed even faster than the original, and 'Nemesis of Neglect''s calmer ending. Actually, I'm mentioning the entire back half... let's add closer 'My Inner Demons', then, built almost entirely around creative bass lines. A last note: 'Castration of Christ' is a funny title, especially in light of 'I Am Christ' to be found later in the tracklist...

I also noticed that Kevorkian's Angels originated from the same US area as Anal Cunt, which shows in drummer extraordinaire John Gillis also appearing in that band, and bassist Nick Camilleri playing alongside Seth Putnam in Upsidedown Cross. All of this acts as a weird preamble to say that it really does sound like Putnam is doing uncredited vocals here – frontman Mark York employs a similar strained, unintelligible scream, to the point I'm surprised to hear him uttering real words on 'My Inner Demons'. He doesn't really benefit from the album's rather considerable (45 mins) playing time and, what's worse at the moment, he would do much better in the future. That pretty much applies to the whole band... but that's another story.

Rating: 7 out of 10