Band: Jungle Rot
Title: What Horrors Await
Label: Napalm Records
Distribution: Rough Trade
Release date: 30/04/2009
Review: CD

The history of the American band Jungle Rot has never been the easiest one. Not only the band suffered from painful line up changes, they did also have some problems with some of their former labels. Example: their initial label Pulveriser Records (on which the band released its first recordings) needed to stop due to financial problems. However, the band never gave up, and in mean time they were able to record and release several well received studio recordings, among which some through bigger labels (Olympic, closely related to major Century Media, and Crash Music). At the end of last year, the band signed to the Austrian label Napalm Records, which is a huge name when it comes to, especially, Folk and Gothic-oriented Metal nowadays, as one of the few Death Metal formations on the rooster (the early years of the label were especially characterised by underground Black Metal releases, for your information).
What Horrors Await lasts for more than forty minutes and brings US-oriented Death Metal with an old school vein. Most tracks have a groovy and not that fast tempo (some pieces are even pretty slow, closely Doom-injected), but again it sort of defines the morbid yet oh so beautiful relationship between intensity and oppression. USDM does not need to be fast to be brutal, as you might know! And indeed, What Horrors Await ís intense and brutal to the core. The double bass assaults and rhythmic drum patterns, the harsh yet ‘plain’ guitar riffs, and the extremely deep grunts crush and destroy with a straight-forward mentality, uncompromisingly bolt throwering with thunder and lightning. A minor detail is the limited variation between the tracks (the tempo, for example, yet also some riffs and rhythms, are pretty alike), but the average quality isn’t average at all. Hundreds of bands try to sound like the original USDM-bands from the early years, yet only a few succeed. In Jungle Rot’s case, however, it’s a bull’s eye hit. Nice material, fifteen years after the band’s birth, it’s like a sweet nightmare come true!

83/100

Ivan Tibos.