Full Artist Update

Matt Byrne
On The Rise

You know that warm, fuzzy feeling you get with certain people? Well, when Matt Byrne first joined Hatebreed in 1998, that feeling just wasn't there. 'We didn't get along,' says the drummer. 'We didn't click.' So Byrne left the ferocious metal-core band the following year and went back to college to become an elementary school teacher.

But it turns out that no grudges were held between the two parties. In fact, Byrne was invited to drum for Hatebreed again in 2001, during the band's Ozzfest run. And by the following year, it was official: Byrne was back in the band and recording their pulverizing second album, Perseverance.

The sessions for that album moved quickly. 'It was like, - Alright, let's do it,' and 'Okay, it's done,' Byrne says. Things were different, however, when Byrne drummed on Hatebreed's most recent album, The Rise Of Brutality. 'the writing process was long,' he reports, 'and there was more time to play around with the songs, because I knew them better. And the drumming is more out-front and in-your-face.'

Byrne's chops cut especially deep on "Beholder Of Justice," which "chugs along with double bass and a lot of cool fills on top," he notes. Byrne's equally proud of the brutish 'doomsayer." "The fills almost sound like someone falling down the stairs, like in a cartoon."

Jeff Perlah

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