(written by Islander)
Today is the day when the New England blackened technical death metal band Ethereal Rot will release their self-titled debut album, and to help spread the word we’re premiering a video for a song off the new album called “Festum Terrae“.
The album narrates an elaborate cosmic horror story conceived by the band, which we’ll soon attempt to summarize. As for the band itself, it’s a quintet from Maine and New Hampshire that includes members of such groups as The Last King, Sonic Pulse, and Sawtopsy, and they recommend their music for fans of Cattle Decapitation, Suffocation, and The Zenith Passage.
Those are appealing references, but they’re still probably not adequate preparation for the mind-bending spectacle of madness and devastation that you’ll experience in the song we’re about to premiere.
The album’s narrative arc posits the existence of an entity called the Mother God that existed at the heart of impenetrable darkness from which all universes were spawned. As the band describe:
“She is forever surrounded by seven black flames — each representing a facet of her laws. These laws are to be followed by the Gardners, the intelligent caretakers of each planet. On Earth, the Gardners are the human race…. To keep watch over the Gardners, and the planets they tended, the Mother God created lesser deities to ensure that cosmic order was maintained, and that the Gardners did not stray from their path.”
However, as millennia passed, “certain forms of life became self-destructive, cruel towards other forms of life, and in some cases, obliterated their own home worlds,” in violation of the Mother God’s laws. “In some cases, the Keepers themselves became enthralled by their own power, giving in to hubris, and creating worlds that suited their own selfish desires.” Enraged over the displays of disrespect for the gifts she bestowed, the Mother God created a greater form of being:
“Birthed with an unceasing lust to consume sidereal decay, the Black Hole Covenant were born. Cosmic demons, they travel the infinite expanse, ever-frothing, ever-starved for the flesh of dying species and planets. Cloaked in stars, with monolithic, leathery wings, and black bone horns that curved over faces both beautiful and horrible, skin the inky shade of a black hole….
“When the Gardners of a world break the Mother God’s laws, or when a Keeper has gone mad, the planet itself will begin to decay, releasing distress pheromones to the Black Hole Covenant. This is their sign to consume that planet, cutting off the corrupted branch from her tree of life.”
That’s quite a dark story, and one that of course has parallels in our planet’s major and minor religions, in which all-powerful divinities can’t seem to stop their mortal creations from becoming corrupt and losing their minds and their moral compasses.
“Festum Terrae” is itself a very dark musical story, but a dazzling one too. At the outset the riffing is viciously heavy and corrosive, both brutally surging and maniacally roiling. The low end hits like sledgehammers and battering rams. The vocals rabidly scream and monstrously roar from hideous abysses.
As the song evolves, the madness increases, and so do the band’s technical flourishes. The riffing seethes, swarms, and blisters; both guitars and bass quickly convulse in episodes of squirming mania; and the guitars execute rapidly flickering arpeggios that swirl, scream, and gleam. The screamed vocals splinter in even greater extremes of insanity, and the roars sound even more voracious.
The intricate fretwork escapades spin heads throughout their high-speed and borderline-berserk escapades of violence and lunacy, while the rhythm section furiously thunder and batter. It’s a disturbing experience in some ways, creating a flat-out sonic war zone of expansive scope that sounds not just viciously unhinged but also desperate, yet it’s also undeniably exhilarating, especially when an extended clear-toned guitar solo spectacularly pops eyes open beginning around the 4:40 mark and propels the song to a new zenith.
In the song’s closing phase, the music begins to sound dismal as well as deranged, and then brutishly pounds, creating a catastrophic finale to a truly mind-bending spectacle.
ETHEREAL ROT is:
Cody Moreau – Lead Vocals
Dan Train – Guitars
Brett Horton – Guitars
Taylor Belanger – Bass
Duncan Fosnough – Drums
All music on the new album was recorded, produced, mixed, and mastered by Ethereal Rot and Taylor Belanger at Granite Tomb Productions. All lyrics were written by Cody Moreau. The cover art was created by Erskine Designs. For more info about the band and the album, and to pick it up, see the locations linked below — and we’ve also embedded a full stream of the album after the links.
https://linktr.ee/etherealrot
https://etherealrot.bandcamp.com/album/ethereal-rot
https://www.facebook.com/Etherealrotofficial/
https://www.instagram.com/etherealrotofficial/