In the brief minutes of each vacation day that I yield to the tug of metal, the great cosmic dice-roller of chance has been serving up death metal the last couple of days. Yesterday it was Bodyfarm and My Own Grave, and today it’s a Danish band called DIE. Yes, that’s DIE with all capital letters. No exclamation point, but there might as well be.

I owe this discovery to the NCS reader, commenter, and source of useful information who calls himself Utmu. He wrote me about this band back in July and then again yesterday, when I didn’t take the hint the first time. Blessings be upon his horned head for persistence, because I am really liking what I’ve heard so far. It has gone upside my head in ways both thuggish and surgical.

The dependably brutal Unique Leader record label released DIE’s debut album, Rise Of The Rotten, in March 2010. It was mixed and mastered by Tue Madsen at his well-known Antfarm studio in Århus, Denmark, and he did one helluva slick job. The music is on the blistering, tech-heavy side of the death-metal spectrum, but this is not skittering, spider-like tech-death; the production preserves the grit and power of an avalanche in motion. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »