The machine is awake. You can hear it grinding, spitting sparks, echoing across the frozen expanse of Northern Ontario. From Sudbury—where smokestacks bleed into steel skies—comes a new force in Canadian metal: Hatred’s Rise. At the heart of it all is guitarist, producer, and sonic architect Pat Larocque, a man pulling riffs like copper from the veins of the Earth and welding them into something monstrous.
Their debut album, Echoes of the Machine (out now via Iron Sphere Records), isn’t some bedroom demo or half-hearted local project. It’s a war machine, loaded with heavy artillery from across the metal spectrum: Glen and Shawn Drover (ex-Megadeth), Henning Basse (ex-Firewind), and Mike DiMeo (ex-Riot, ex-Masterplan). This isn’t collaboration for clout—it’s a blood pact across borders, an experiment in fusing the molten heart of classic thrash and melodic metal with the circuitry of modern production.
Spin it once and you’ll feel the DNA—shades of Peace Sells sneering at you from the corner, Practice What You Preach grinning with sharp teeth, even echoes of early prog-leaning Metallica. But Larocque’s vision isn’t nostalgia—it’s rebirth. Tracks like “No More Lies” and “Darkness Falls” stomp with old-school menace, while the title cut, “Echoes of the Machine,” turns its gaze squarely on the digital age, asking what happens when the algorithm eats our anger and spits it back twice as toxic.
There’s grit, there’s groove, and—thanks to Henning Basse and Mike DiMeo’s guest vocals—there’s anthemic fire that lifts the whole record into stadium-ready territory. And when the Drover brothers lock in, you can almost hear the ghosts of arenas echoing with fists in the air.
But what makes Echoes of the Machine dangerous is the honesty. Larocque doesn’t wrap his vision in pretension. He admits straight up: “I just want people to listen to it and hopefully enjoy it.” There’s no manifesto, no sermon—just riffs, heart, and the raw spark of a creator who’s lived and breathed this sound long enough to know when it feels right.
So where does Hatred’s Rise go from here? Maybe live shows, maybe another round in the sonic laboratory. What matters is that this project already feels bigger than the sum of its parts. It’s the machine roaring in the dark, daring us to listen.
If you want safe metal, you won’t find it here. But if you want to hear Canada punch through the static, if you want riffs that cut like broken glass under neon light, then Echoes of the Machine is your next obsession.
And trust me—the echoes are only just beginning.
This is gospel.
I bite Crowd Surfers.
killer.
