RED ROT – Borders Of Mania

vote
7.5

• Bands:
  RED ROT
• Duration: 00:43:30
• Available from: 10/05/2024
• Label:

• Hammerheart Records

Streaming not yet available

Davide Tiso and Luciano Lorusso George renew their collaboration for the second chapter of Red Rot: the circumstance had aroused some attention two years ago, because it is precisely from the union of these two minds that the best chapters of the adventure Ephel Duath, with the triptych composed of “The Painter's Palette”, “Pain Necessary To Know” and “Through My Dog's Eyes”, released between 2003 and 2009, constituting three examples of very personal and out of the ordinary avant-garde extreme metal canons.
An adventure, that of Ephel Duath, which is still referred to today to describe Tiso's musical work, which after then continued with other projects of good value, even if not up to the level of inventiveness of the albums just mentioned. The artistic reunion with the singer of what we could define as 'the best years' for the musician Davide Tiso had not coincided, for Red Rot's debut “Mal De Vivre”, in something memorable: it was an album with some discreet flashes, some flashes and a decidedly eclectic performance on the microphone, but without great strings to his bow. A mixture of death, thrash, hardcore and small eccentricities that were also enjoyed listening to, even though they couldn't keep up with the best releases in the sector of the period.
Two years later, the formula apparently remains unchanged, only that all the attributes already previously referable to the training appear to have been considerably improved, ultimately leading to a notable leap forward.
The structure of “Borders Of Mania” is that of “Mal De Vivre”: fifteen tracks for less than three quarters of an hour of music, once again in the name of a vibrant, resentful extreme metal, concise in its rhythms and crossed by negativity and anxiety in abundance. If this recipe book appeared conventional in its debut, a bit sparse in its instrumental performance and anchored to slightly dated ways of understanding extreme metal, the newcomer is loved right from the first listens. Another compactness is perceived, a stormy roughness that can recall crust-hardcore and d-beat, with references to the massacres conceived by characters like Tragedy, From Ashes Rise, Disfear, inserted in a more traditionally metal context.
The hardcore vein applied to the theatricality of Lorusso George works very well, making the individual tracks turn from simple loose splinters to murky excursions into the shadowy areas of our soul, with a mix of vocalizations that smack of genial disorders as well as sadistic madness. The instrumental assembly as a whole sounds heavier, dynamic and stinging, touching and exceeding the limits of grind several times, and then willingly returning to moments of creeping malignity, with suspicions of doom emerging amidst the noise.
It is an impulsive and at the same time rational album, “Borders Of Mania”, straight to the point and feral. The experimental thrust is not that of the best Ephel Duath, let's be clear, but it's not something the band is looking for either. Rather, you take codified genres and try to crumple and broaden them as needed so that they act as a vehicle for your own twisted anger.
Supported by a massive and organic production, Red Rot's second album flows irrational and wild, but with great rigor: there are no madnesses put there just to be splendid, every detail is functional to hurt, to beat with the instruments also instilling a certain amount of discomfort and discomfort. As it is conceived, “Borders Of Mania” works best if savored in its entirety, drinking it all at once, to fully take charge of all its reasoned violence.
Without particular twists, without the desire to have to prove who knows what, Tiso's group overwhelms the perplexities induced by “Mal De Vivre” and gives us a nice cross-section of extreme metal suspended between the 90s and today.