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ROTHEADS
Slither In Slime

Memento Mori (2022)
Rating: 8.5/10

Raking the depths of early Swedish death metal, but with extra layers of sick and silt, is Rotheads, Romania’s very own foul four-piece that are also happy to plumb the depths of the classic old school American death metal sound while combining it with flashes of Finnish valour too.

Slither In Slime acts as the blistered sister of Sewer Fiends, which the band released four years ago. What you get here are some archetypal hammering but doused in a peculiar eeriness whereby tracks such as ‘’Vampyric Inbreeding’ lumber along with misty guise enhanced by chunky, grey riffs and melancholic leads. It’s certainly a take on the likes of Carnage, Grave et al, but with extra layers of menace, and yet there’s some killer melodies squirming within the murkiness. Lovers of ponderous, slow-motion death / doom will adore some of the lo-fi segments offered on this record, but the hideous, faster stylings on a track such as ‘Gut Mauled’ are just as horrifically pungent.

Rotheads have a really obscure sound; something so organic and earthy, deathly and droll to result in a weird kind of grey-haze tension. So while you get an air of familiarity, the air is in fact just so wretched and thick. ‘Gore Coffin’ and ‘Dragged Through Existence’ just burrow into your flesh and clamp onto your veins with their squalid existence. The drums just clank in utter misery, the bass is no cheerier, and the vocals and guitar just complement each other like fog on a stale quagmire.

If I’d heard this in 1987 I’d be trading tapes with friends just to get the word out because some of the dynamics puked up here, in spite of being simple, remain archaic and as dismal as it gets. Again I refer to the festering doom-ooze of ‘Dragged Through Existence’ which excretes a compelling yet miserable solo to signal its final breath.

Dreary, drab and bogged down by doom, Slither In Slime is just another grotty, grotesque and drizzle-soaked death metal opus to tell your morbid buddies about.

Neil Arnold

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