Article By: Pat ‘Riot’ Whitaker ‡ Edited By: Leanne Ridgeway
From right within the heart of my distant backyard of Lexington, KY comes the three-song introduction to Rotting Kingdom.
The band issued this self-titled effort back in August of 2017, but I only recently discovered the band myself. The quintet within this unit, Anton Escobar (vocals), Clay Rice (guitar), Kyle Keener (guitar), Chuck McIntyre (bass), and Brandon Glancy (drums), has a masterfully developed throwback style of heaviness.
That heaviness is served up as a crushing campaign of old-school death metal-influenced doom ala early My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost or Sentenced. The three tracks on this EP, “Adrift In A Sea Of Souls“, “Castle Of Decay“, and “Demons In Stained Glass“, rumble with nods to morose, yet traditional dismality. Riff-driven and bleakly blackened, with thundering rhythmic pulses, the music is sorrowfully morose.
As for the vocals, they are of a most dense, throat-ravaging guttural variety. When paired with the aforementioned music, the resulting output is an overburdening load of oppressive opaqueness. Submission to this sonic hopelessness is assured, despite the brief periods of accelerating tempos, this is music for which the suffering welcome. The ‘Rotting Kingdom’ S/T EP is available for streaming below.
