All Metal genres are brutally saturated with material, from good to bad, for better or for worse. But with each good and each bad sub-genre there is an undying dedicated fan base. If you wanted to you could listen to nothing but Old School Death Metal for all eternity and still have new releases flowing to you by the day. Is this a case of quantity over quality? Most probably and as any other reviewer will tell you that could not be a truer statement. I’ve always kind of look at reviewing as “I’m obsessed with Metal so you don’t have to be” meaning that I and my fellow reviewers are the ploughers of material, unearthing the new and the exciting, so with digging in mind let’s exhume this grave.
The international newbies Eternal Rot are what we uncover, their remains taken from the UK and Poland. They formed in 2012 and the following year released a Promo on cassette and 7 inch. Even now with their 2018 full length release I was sent a CD. I admire their slavery to physical media as one who is a sucker for it also. None the less it is to this full length we come to speak, Cadaverine is its name and Death Metal is its aim, nasty Old School cavernous Death Metal that is.
So Eternal Rot from name to sound are every bit as true as you might expect. Huge down trodden nigh on Mortician slabs of guitar and bass lay on top of cavernous crossed with traditional Death Metal drumming and guttural Incantation styled vocals. All of this sounds like a sure fire winner and truth be told it absolutely is. At only four tracks long and clocking in just under the thirty minute mark it’s obvious that Eternal Rot have mastered the art of lengthy Death Metal songs. Slough Of Despond the closer shows this trait off in misery stricken fashion, however this debut could do with being a track longer.
Yet at what cost does this all come? Like a thick sludge all of the tracks on this debut melt together which makes for a particularly outstanding full album experience, another point which I commend. My only, and dare I say rather big criticism is this. In recent years there has been a surge in popularity of videos online titled ‘Trip-Hop to study to’ or ‘Classical music for studying’ and I feel like Eternal Rot’s Cadaverine would fit nicely in a video entitled ‘Death Metal to relax/ study to’ related videos: Death Metal spa etc. There isn’t a single notion on this album that stirs excitement in me, other than the fact this makes for some of the greatest background music ever.
I almost feel like commending the band on that point and in a totally inoffensive manner. Whilst I’m sure the intention of Eternal Rot is not to provide mere background music for Metalheads they do a damn fine job of it. All jokes aside I could really see myself nodding along to this at a festival at three in the morning, it has that slow, drunken stupor which I so often enjoy in Doom, Drone and Sludge all of which are an influence herein. I genuinely urge anyone who likes Death Metal and Brian Eno to give this a spin.
(6/10 George Caley)
Leave a Reply