Worship Metal Album of the Week – Earth Rot – Black Tides Of Obscurity
Grim relentless groove......
Earth Rot‘s appropriation of Scandinavian sounds may mark this outfit out as Swedish through and through and yet these guys, surprisingly, hail from Australia. Geography aside, what is most important is that these blackened death metallers are a welcome breath of putrid air and their assimilation of old-school Swedish death metal (channeling the work of early Entombed, Dismember, Necrophobic etc.) and chilly-assed black metal – replete with corpse-painted shrieks and lightning-fast tremolo picking – is an absolute joy to behold!
Earth Rot’s particular take on blackened death metal affords them the opportunity to alternate seamlessly from HM-2 inspired buzzsaw grooves into black metal belligerence and it works perfectly…..every fuckin’ time! You only need check out the intro to “Towards A Godless Shrine” to hear Earth Rot’s seemless amalgamation of both styles in full effect.
Earth Rot don’t just limit themselves to black and death metal either. In fact, they throw a little bit of everything into their scintillating mix including thrash, blues and funk and that conjures up as much dynamism as it sounds.
With exemplary songwriting informing the entire album it’s almost impossible to select a particular highlight. However, the ridiculously catchy nature of the almost funk-infused “The Cape Of Storms” is worthy of singling out for its sheer bravado alone. The rest? Just as good, just as varied and equally surprising.
With not a second wasted and no diabolical blackened death metal stone left unturned, Earth Rot’s Black Tides Of Obscurity is as close to metal perfection as we’ve heard all year! 9/10
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