Beats and yelling: Rotheads

Unfazed by Death
Out 26^th January on Memento Mori (originally released in 2016)

It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Rotheads. There 2022 effort ‘Slither in Slime’ was one of the best of that year, and easily outstrips the majority of contemporary death metal for its ability to weave tapestries of drab, gothic grace into ruggedly primal death metal. This reissue of their first recorded material allows us an insight into the development of their style at its germinal phase, leveraging repetition and simple yet memorable ideas to create a haunting, meditative flow rarely found in the frantic world of death metal.

The production is of demo quality, but to some extent this works more in Rotheads favour than many of their faster contemporaries. The compositions are spacious, lackadaisical, in no hurry to throw a barrage of ideas at the listener, they let individual themes sit for a while with patient rumination. Drums are often the ones to suffer in a rough mix with limited space, but here the performance cuts through neatly without overpowering the guitars. The latter of which are chunky and sharp despite the muffled tone. Guttural vocals provide ample reverb to open out the mix and lend it that dank, monstrous atmosphere.

Bolt Thrower, Incantation, and Autopsy sit as the most obvious influences. Whilst this may be par for the course as far as OSDM is concerned, Rotheads coalesce this material into sui generis narrative statements, an unfurling thread of intrigue and tension striking in its simplicity. It’s not the material itself necessarily, which for the most part is rather standard mid-paced death metal stripped back even further to its most basic rudiments. It’s how Rotheads organise these components into a story worth the telling. Simple molecules gather momentum as the piece progresses, taking on more substantive forms like a snowball barrelling down a snow covered hill. At once playful, naïve, yet also threatening, sophisticated after a fashion.

It’s the confidence Rotheads show in letting ideas sit and breathe for longer than is typical for death metal, along with a degree of faith that sometimes all a piece needs is a gentle nudge in order to develop it toward a whole new permutation. Dialling back on a riff, throwing at soaring guitar harmonies, or cutting to mid-tempo, all stock ideas, but brought to life with imaginative arrangement and conviction in the delivery, sometimes this is all that is required to elevate music above its component parts into artistry.