Rat King – Vicious Inhumanity – Album Review

Seattle’s Rat King have emerged from the subterranean darkness with a brand new album of intense death / grind. This follow up to 2016’s Garbage Island jettisons much of that albums sludgy / stoner undercurrent and embraces an industrialised clatter of deathly proportions instead. With teeth bared and ears pricked, Rat King are incensed and swarming upon the masses with their vitriol laid bare.

A jittering, jarring cavalcade of extreme noise(s), both vocal and instrumental, awaits those brave enough to follow these pied pipers of experimental death-grind on their merry march of violence. This fucker is 100% full on and while the acoustic opening to “Zero” may fool you (fleetingly) into thinking something calming is heading your way, it’s soon back to the death / grind basics for these rat bastards who appear to have no qualms in smashing your skull in with wave after wave of clattering brute force.

Rat King are not pretty, and what they do is not particularly clever, but if you have an angry musical itch that wants scratching then these fuckers won’t just scratch it, they’ll gnaw away at it until it’s gone for good! 6/10

Rat King
Vicious Inhumanity
Within The Mind Records
17th January 2020