Please tell us about the history of your band and its members.
The band formed in 2015, I came up with the name while listening to the Polish band named Hate and was looking at Slayer’s artwork for Reign In Blood.
Our current line up joined the band in 2017 after auditioning numerous possibilities of various talented artists that Ottawa happens to offer. The challenge is that life intercedes and we can’t hold people back from going on their own way where necessary. Some other pre-2017 members just didn’t’ make the grade.
The initial goal of this band was to work with new musicians whom I had never worked with before or knew from the local scene. All of which were achieved, despite one of the members happens to play with 2 other local bands, however as it would seem, he and I never encountered one another ever previous to his joining Hatred Reigns. The other 3 are new to the scene and appreciate the opportunity to develop original Canadian extreme metal and contribute to the genre as a whole.

How would you describe your style? Which bands influenced your music?
Hatred Reigns are a Canadian Extreme Metal band. We fuse old with new music elements to make a refreshing project that we hope will appeal to a broad range of fans.
We are influenced by many bands but some include: Cryptopsy, Suffocation, The Black Dahlia Murder, Opeth, Morbid Angel, Death, Obscura, Necrophagist, Beyond Creation, and many more talented bands.

Why should a metalhead buy your demos/albums?
We offer a blend of new and old elements that will surely appeal to a broad range of audiences. We don’t entirely focus our style towards one audience type. In this day in age, the key is to appeal to a broad range of audiences and we believe that our music will interest an eclectic type of music fan who appreciates old and new metal music influences.

What have you released so far and how were your releases received by the public/media?
Our first EP Realm: I – Affliction will be released officially on May 25th, 2018 and will be available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Music, Youtube and many other outlets for discovering new music. We hope to get some reviews of the EP soon but so far the reviews from elite metal bands and labels who have heard our EP deem it as “Your release is awesome man.” Flo Mounier from Cryptopsy, “Sounds like Hate Eternal has influenced your music.” Nick Padovani from Equipoise, “your release reminds me of Lost Souls – which is a major influence on my writing style” – Malcolm Pugh (The Artisan Era / Inferi), and master Terrance Hobbs from Suffocation gave it a HUGE Thumbs up on Facebook messenger.
We hope to have some official reviews soon to be able to properly utilize these responses as required.

Do you play live as well? How's your live activity so far?
We played 5 live shows in 2017 over the course of the year. These 5 shows were all Ottawa, ON/Gatineau, QC based. In 2018, we aim to play more out of town shows along with 3-4 to local shows over the course of the year. Our performances have been well received as we have been playing to sold out shows for 4/5 of those previous shows. We hope the forthcoming year will continue on the same or set even higher goals with the coming shows. Thus far we are on target to achieve bigger goals with the various bands that we are on the bill with. We aim to play more out of town shows in the coming months.

What should labels/zines/promoters know about your band? Why should they be interested in it?
Hatred Reigns would like labels/zines/promoters to listen to our music and formulate their own interpretation of our sound. To hear a wide variety of influences that go into each of our songs and to hear the high quality production that our EP showcases.
We have a very high quality animated lyric video that will be released in June. We have various media marketing tools to develop and deploy in the coming months following our first show. And there is discussion about possibly shooting a music video for one of the songs from the EP. It would be a matter of timing and weather permits to shoot our vision for one of the songs from EP. This video would be a great way to market our band and hopefully appeal to the labels/zines/promoters with our blend of old and new musical elements, which of course, we would wish to, take our music to the masses and perform where opportunities permit. Be it close or even possibly off of this continent to perform at any/all venues/festivals. Any chance to share our music with the masses is the original point of creating a project in the first place.

What plans do you have for the near future as a band?
Develop more songs so we can work towards our planned 13 song concept album, although could be release another EP before achieving the desired bigger goal of releasing the LP as planned. We have many of the songs in development. We have a number of shows booked for the summer and fall. As well there are various videos aimed to be released in the coming months.

Where can we listen to your band and where can we buy your stuff?
Eps and merchandise are available to purchase via hatredreigns.bandcamp.com, Spotify, iTunes, google music, youtube and various other music source locations.

May 2018