Artist: Rotpit
Country: Germany / Sweden
Label: War Anthem Records
Formats: LP / CD
Year: 2024
‘Long Live The Rot’ is Rotpit’s second full-length album and with a few short-players under their belts they can easily be considered a prolific Death Metal band. Working at a considerable pace is certainly easier when done in pairs rather than a many-member band, because although a new drummer has recently joined, Rotpit still consists of the tandem of Jonny Pettersson (Wombbath, ex-Massacre, ex-Just Before Dawn, among others) and Ralf Hauber (Revel In Flesh). But the biggest advantage for Rotpit to maintain a brisk pace in releasing new material is the sometimes staggering simplism of the music, which is again no different on ‘Long Live The Rot’ (pfff, that title…).
Because while Rotpit are certainly among the upper echelons in their class of monotonous Death Metal, it all ends up being quite similar. So, just with al previously released Rotpit material, my thoughts and opinions keep going in all directions. It is not a punishment to listen to and it is incredibly recognisable, despite the fact that within the entire Rotpit oeuvre there is no original note to be found, but there is no denying that after a while, there is a bit of a drag. The attention does not stay with the music for the whole ride and it turns out to be fine background music to do other things.
With the first album, I was still surprised that it stayed ‘fun’ for longer than the playing time of a few minutes as on the EP released just before, and on the recently released split 7” EP they effortlessly trumped the altogether overrated Deteriorot, but still… Rotpit remains a difficult case for me. Undeniably they are good at what they do, but the question is really how long they can keep this up before it starts to get really annoying. However, it could very well be that the band has reached that point by now, but given the other very limited musical antics of both gentlemen, I don’t expect any miracles…
