Rotting Kingdom ‘A Deeper Shade of Sorrow’
Album Review By Adam McCann
Boris Records/Death/Doom Metal
Death metal can be a genre where the bands are ten-a-penny; but once every so often, a band jumps out of the mire and into the limelight and that is exactly what has occurred with Rotting Kingdom. The Kentucky band incredibly impressed with their self-titled debut EP back in 2017 and now, three years later ‘A Deeper Shade of Sorrow’, Rotting Kingdom’s debut album is ready for release.
What Rotting Kingdom deliver with their debut is an album of excellent death metal; yet, beneath the stereotypical sounds is something a little more doom. This is not the sound of a young band blasting forward at a million miles an hour, there is a strategy here, a thought process where each section the songs have been examined, analysed and re-examined to create something that is very interesting indeed. There are no better examples of what Rotting Kingdom do than at the latter end of ‘A Deeper…’ with ‘The Antechambers of Eternity’ and the title track which really do showcase everything that Rotting Kingdom are capable of. Therefore, ‘A Deeper…’ has all the appeal of Runemagick, Temple of Void and Indesinence with its overall sombre feel where themes of death, the passage of time, beauty and loss run strong throughout this album as crushing riffs thunderously juxtapose themselves against a dismal and mournful undercurrent. It is during this undercurrent where this album excels, really providing something interesting in a genre generally devoid of thought.
‘A Deeper…’ brings an excellent breath of fresh air into a genre that can be a bloated, stale and stagnant; those fans who like their death metal with a certain something else or looking for something with a little je ne sais quoi should look no further than this album.
Rating : 83/100
MHF Magazine/Adam McCann
