2023 was a good year for death metal, and amidst all the quality knuckle-dragging, Rotpit’s Let There Be Rot debut was a most welcome unearthing. Spewed forth by fiends from such acts as Heads for the Dead, Wombbath, and Revel in Flesh, Let There Be Rot blended the worst angels of the Swedish and American schools of decay to deliver an entertaining dose of infectious medical waste with a shocking number of greasy hooks. It’s an album I return to often and it still sounds freshly deceased. This is why I was so surprised to see the Pit boys back only a year later with Long Live the Rot. With their commitment to all things rotten firmly in place (5 of the 10 tracks contain “rot” in the title) and a new drummer on board, can these pit demons once again show us where the slime lives while keeping things interesting and appropriately grotesque? Welcome to the first ever Rotsgiving!
Things open on an especially dank, brown note with “Sewer Rot” which is really the worst kind of rot if you think about it. It’s cavernous, slimy, slithering and oh-so unclean. It offers all manner of ear contamination, but somehow feels less bestial and brain-stimulating than the offal served up on the debt. The overall style is much the same as last time, with cuts like “Massive Maggot Swarm” and the title track throwing reverb-thick riffs and horrid vocals at the cavern wall to see what sticks. Enough does to keep you listening, but the overall fun levels are less than what I was hoping for. The Incantolation influence of the title track is quite endearing nonetheless. Prime cut “The Triumph of Rot” feels like it drops a cubic ton of wet concrete on you with its thick plodding advance that borrows muchly from Bolt Thrower. Standout “Tunnel Rat” is more urgent and in-your-face with a punky d-beat leading the way. It sounds like the earliest Entombed material and that’s always a good thing. “Funeral Mock” also stands tall with meaty riffage and enough aggression to infirm a femur.
While no track is completely barren of merit, the overall excitement and intrigue levels are lessened and none of the material hits as hard as the best stuff on the debut. I like that there are bits and pieces that recall the earliest days Paradise Lost, and the expected nods to Entombed and Dismember are fine (and, you know, expected), but the album feels overly restrained, which is not what one would expect from a band called Rotpit. Take “Dirt Dwellers” for example. It rides along in a doomy dirge with only brief hiccups into mid-tempo chuggery. It’s not bad, but it’s fairly dull and never takes flight. Maybe it’s just me, but I want more menace and anger in my mass grave of moldering corpses. At a svelte 35-plus minutes, Long Live the Rot doesn’t feel like a chore to get through, but a few cuts have flabby love handles that could have been trimmed. The production is cavernous, full of reverb, and skews a bit muddy, muting the instruments more than it should while lacking a big, oppressive guitar tone. That’s a miss for me, dawg.
Once again Jonny Pettersson (Massacre, Heads for the Dead, Wombbath) handles guitar and bass and brings chonky leads and gravely grooves to the decay ditch. His playing reeks of the early 90s Swedeath scene with frequent side quests into classic Incantation cave swamp doom riffage and the shitfun of Autopsy. I’m a sucker for the blueprint and when he executes it well, the songs crackle and pop like a diseased boil. However, the tendency to remain in a mid-tempo space for too much of the album saps a lot of energy from the material and truly killer riffs are few. Ralf Hauber (Heads for the Dead, Revel in Flesh) offers excellently ginormous, echoey death roars that suit the music and he sounds as large and in charge as last time. He’s the right man for the job and makes everything sound extra moist and squishy. New kit-man Erik Barthold (Darklands) brings plenty of percussive brutality to the crime scene, but again, things end up too restrained for him to work up a good mouth foaming.
I get the feeling the minds behind Rotpit spent the last year binging on old Incantation and Immolation albums and that oozed into their writing this time. The result is less about an orgy of violence and more about murky atmospheres. I prefer a potent blend of both and thus, Long Live the Rot leaves me feeling partially unburied.1 This gives me the sadz, and on the first Rotsgiving no less! I truly enjoy this project since it’s essentially the modern-day Death Breath, so I hope they have a longer shelf life than those Swedish sickos did, and that they can regroup to shove us deeper into the putrescence in the future. In the meantime, I’ll still celebrate the Rot season so give me a maggoty turkey leg and a bottle of hobo pruno and I’ll go sulk in the pit corner.
Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: War Anthem Records
Websites: facebook.com/rotpit666 | instagram.com/rotpit_official
Releases Worldwide: November 29th, 2024
Felagund
The band’s name is Rotpit. Half the songs on their sophomore album Long Live the Rot have the word “rot” in the title. This is knuckle dragging, club wielding, marsh-dwelling caveman metal. This is grimy, slimy, choking-on-swamp water metal. So if you’re here desperately searching for a review of the latest avant-garde post-metal release by a critically-acclaimed one man black metal project, I suggest you take your frontal lobe and shove it (preferably into the steaming heap with the others), because the noise the Neanderthals in Rotpit produce is only fit for plaque-addled amygdalas. As the proud owner of such grotesque brain matter, I found their 2023 debut Let There Be Rot to be a splendidly nasty affair. But can the same be said for their follow up? Can Long Live the Rot live up to the brutish power of its predecessor? Will I walk away once more, id pulsating and hip waders overflowing with viscous offal? I should be so lucky.
This may come as a shock to many of you, but Rotpit don’t appear to be overly concerned with musical evolution or artistic growth. The band that so disgusted you last year are back with a vengeance in 2024, and not much has changed. Long Live the Rot continues the pummeling assault Rotpit introduced on their first album, bashing in your eardrums with landslides of rumbling riffs, driving drums, and serpentine solos that slink between and above the perilous mountain of ichor. But as the record thunders onward, you can’t ignore the whiffs of Entombed or Bolt Thrower, nor can you overlook the understated but no less pungent stench of Sanguisanibog or the odoriferous Acid Bath riffs. But taken together, Rotpit continues to be their very own disgusting thing, an ethos that is driven home on Long Live the Rot.
“Sewer Rot” is a serviceable, fetid opener that boasts burly riffs, a doomy chorus, and plenty of buzzsaw guitar work. But in my estimation, the album truly finds its greasy footing on second track “Massive Maggot Swarm.” You’ve got an Acid Bath-infused main riff that disappears and reappears in between bouts of thick, trudging guitar, punishing double bass, and searing solos, all played through what sounds like a generous coating of soggy slime mold. Truth be told, most of the tunes on Long Live the Rot conform to a version of this approach, weaving in impenetrable walls of murky sound alongside heaving, repetitious riffs, mid-paced grooves, cavernous death growls, and understated drums that maintain momentum even when the guitars refuse to be moved. “Long Live the Rot” and “Funeral Mock” are album standouts, equipt as they are with both choruses and riffs that find their success through repetition. And while “Triumph of the Rot” and “Tunnel Rat” bring some welcome freneticism to the party, I’m here for the buzzy grime; the kind of oozing, musical muck that would make Anton Arcane gag.
It’s hard to have too much of a good thing, and thanks to a tight runtime and their ability to strike just the right balance between brutality and brevity, Rotpit have crafted a fun album that knows exactly what it wants to be. That’s not to say that every song is a prime cut (although they’re all beginning to turn). “Dirt Dwellers” is probably the most egregious example, sandwiched as it is between two stronger tracks and falling victim to that age old problem of death metal maniacs everywhere who traffic in the big, the dumb, and the grungy: monotony. Fortunately, while the dreaded M-word may rear its head from time to time, Rotpit knows not to overstay their welcome, and Long Live the Rot is all the better for it.
While this type of metal won’t be for everyone, I found Rotpit’s second album to be a grimy good time. And while I admit to being overly critical of “serious” artists in my opening, I can’t close without identifying what I believe to be the overarching ethos permeating Rotpit’s entire oeuvre. Tongue planted firmly in cheek though it may be, titles like “Triumph of the Rot” speak to a larger ideal; a philosophical undercurrent demanding that we, the listeners, learn to accept, embrace, and ultimately laugh at our own fleeting immortality. Just as Camus demands that we imagine Sisyphus happy, Rotpit demands that we imagine Sisyphus, well…rotting. In this way, Rotpit compose album-length memento mori, inviting us to reflect upon the inevitable. …But they also have a song called “Shitburner,” so what do I know?
Rating: 3.0/5.0
Ferox
Ah, Rotsgiving… a holiday for those of us who feel most alive when contemplating our own demise. We gather round the butcher’s block, as did death metal fans of yore, to celebrate an abundance of decaying riches. The Rotsgiving Day Parade plays in the background while Steel Druhm and Holdeneye prepare a traditional feast of Mystery Carcass and N00b Innards. Felagund spins tales of the Olde School while Maddog and Thus Spoke argue for novel ingredients and a cruelty-free Rotsgiving. Some of us are at home here in the mausoleum, and some stop by to visit from time to time. Cherd reminds everyone to slow down, that sometimes death is best appreciated with a side helping of doom. Have you been off traveling for a spell, like Mark Z.? Welcome back to Rotsgiving–and even if you can’t make it home this year, we always leave a place open for absent family members like Kronos and Ferrous Bueller. There’s even a kid’s table, where Doom et Al is free to blather while Kenstrosity and Dolph mash everything on their plates together and rate the resulting slop a 4.5.
We have high hopes for this year’s main course. Various religions exist to sell you on what happens to your soul after you die. Sweden’s Rotpit knows what happens to your body, and that’s all the inspiration this trio of diehards needs. On the band’s 2023 debut Let There Be Rot, guitarist and Guy in A Lot of Bands Jonny Pettersson (Wombbath, Berzerker Legion) teamed with fellow Heads for the Dead-head Ralf Hauber for a slab of scuzzed-up death built around the question: “What if the meaning of life is to provide food for maggots after you die?” The album resonated bigly with Steel Druhm and with death-inclined staff and readers. A scant year later, Rotpit returns to bestow the blessings of Long Live the Rot upon all who celebrate Rotsgiving. Will the staff leave the holiday table satisfied, or is this just reheated fare?
The ingredients in Long Live the Rot are the same as the ones in last year’s meal, even if this dish emerges from the oven with a subtly different mouthfeel. Pettersson’s reverb-basted guitars still dominate. A Rotpit jam typically kicks off with a stomping, stöopid down-tuned riff, after which a dental-drill lead guitar line asserts itself. This is scabby, dank death metal in the vein of Undergang or Autopsy. Pettersson tamps down his gift for hooks in favor of an approach that emphasizes grime and atmosphere. Ralf Hauber’s vocals always sound like he’s nauseated, which suits these songs about decay and the maggots that cause it. So what’s different? Let There Be Rot found an elusive sweet spot between murk and mirth, managing to engage even as it sickened. Long Live the Rot, in contrast, goes heavy on the scuzz and fuzz at the expense of songwriting. It’s still a fast and fun listen, but the new album finds Rotpit falling back into the death metal pack.
Not to air my controversial opinions during Rotsgiving dinner, but the best songs on Long Live the Rot are the ones that have good riffs. Standouts like “Triumph of the Rot” and “Funeral Mock” entice even as they envelop you in Rotpit’s signature fetid cloud. “Tunnel Rat” kicks off with a killer passage that evokes a tunnel borer drilling through tons of earth. If the album came fully stocked with riffs of this quality, Long Live the Rot would be a worthy companion piece to Let There Be Rot. Instead, there are songs and sections where the perfunctory riffage makes it difficult to distinguish one ode to decay from another (“Eat or Be Eaten,” “Dirt Dwellers.”) Maybe Rotpit needed more time between albums, or maybe the concept is already losing steam. Either way, Long Live the Rot is a perfectly nice set of scabby death metal anthems… which makes it a disappointment compared to the band’s opening salvo.
So maybe the main course is drier than we hoped. That doesn’t make Rotsgiving a disappointment. Look around the table. There’s a tray of Stenched that just came out of the oven. The Void Witch and Noxis courses should be along shortly, and I hear there’s Ripped to Shreds for dessert. As for this dish? Meat and potatoes always have their place.
Rating: 3.0/5.0
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