JUNGLE ROT

Sometimes critics (myself included) get so wrapped up in picking the perfect words in a desperate attempt to accurately convey the feeling of a metal album that the important stuff goes gets shoved aside. Sometimes you've just got to cast that tattered and coffee-stained Thesaurus aside and keep it simple. Sometimes three little words are all you need: heavy, fun, and cool. Now come on, it doesn't get much cooler than the battlefield imagery, wartime lyrics, and death groovin' goodness of a JUNGLE ROT album. As any JUNGLE ROT fan will quickly point out, it has never been about intricate song structures or blinding speed. It is about ridin' a heavy fuckin' groove, growling along, and bangin' that thick skull. Now that's what I call fun.

Now here's the really cool part. For the first time ever, Crash Music is releasing to retail "Darkness Foretold", JUNGLE ROT's EP of covers, live cuts, and new material that had previously been unleashed into the underground by SOD magazine in 1998. The covers of "Agent Orange" (SODOM),"Fight 'Til Death" (SLAYER),and "Jesus Hitler" (CARNIVORE) alone are almost worth the price of the album. The tunes are tailor made for JUNGLE ROT's tank division stomp and rumble. The title track (also included as a bonus on cut on "Slaughter the Weak") is one of many classic JR anthems that are driven by vocalist/guitarist Dave Matrise's horrific battle zone tales, old-school death metal vocals, and the fat-ass riffs that define the band's sound. The three live cuts ("Tomb of Armenous", "Eternal Agony", and "Consumed in Darkness") are more than sufficient quality-wise and thrown to the audience like raw meat to a pack of wild dogs, truly giving one the sensation of being at the show. Incidentally, the tempo shifting "Consumed in Darkness", which originally appeared on "Slaughter the Weak", exemplifies the more traditional death metal style characteristic of the early material (i.e., before the groove thing really took hold).

"Darkness Foretold" never tried to be anything but an earth-scorching series of riff bombs and percussion grenades. Nothing fancy here, just a fine representation of the good things that can happen when four determined death mongers put their heads down and go for it.