Hatebreed’s 2013 album The Divinity Of Purpose is their sixth full-length studio album of original material. It follows up their 2009 Self Titled album which expanded the band’s sound a little and it is the first Hatebreed album to come out after Jasta’s self-titled 2011 solo album, which took the core Hatebreed sound and made it a lot more commercial and melodic sounding.

The Divinity Of Purpose at first appearances seems like something of a reaction against both of those records. If you look at the beginning and end of the record it is arguably their fasted, heaviest and most direct album to date. There is a lot less deviation from the established Hatebreed sound, and songs are all pretty brief and straight-forward. There are still chanting backing vocals, crunchy guitars, grooves and breakdowns of course, it is a Hatebreed album after all, but the band seem to be in the mood for the fast, loud and angry side of music this time around. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to say that they’ve taken more of a Slayer influence this time around.

With that being said; the record isn’t devoid of absolutely all variety whatsoever, and from about the halfway point the band start changing things up a little. `Dead Man Breathing’ for example, sounds like something from their Self Titled album, and is one of the slowest moments here. The title-track is a little reminiscent of `I Will Be Heard’ after a fashion and `Indivisible’ has a punky feel to it.

Highlights include `The Language’ which has some fun lead guitar briefly, as well as the aforementioned `Indivisible’ and the very catchy `Nothing Scars Me Anymore’ which is sure to become a live favourite.

The album was produced by Zeuss again, and as such sounds fantastic. If you are expecting something drastically, drastically different to what the band have released before you may be disappointed. Its more of the same, with even less surprises than usual and yet it’s a damn good album. The band are still brilliant at what they do and just know how to make this style of music sound good. This is another set of songs in their trademark style, so its logically going to be a very good album. Even with that `know what to expect’ idea that follows Hatebreed around, it has its own place in their catalogue thanks to its especially straight forward, hard-hitting nature and I recommend it if you like the band.

**Oh, and if you found this review by search engine, when you discover it again on Amazon it is me posting it. It hasn’t been copied and pasted off here by a stranger, I post my reviews on Amazon as ‘Gentlegiantprog “Kingcrimsonprog.”’ So please don’t unhelpful-vote it because you thought it was stolen from me.**