Plakative Aggression

Rotten Roll Rex have released some quality shit, and they’ve introduced me to some more or less unknown obscure acts I probably wouldn’t have heard of otherwise. They’ve also released official merch with some of the greatest gore and grind related bands the underground has to offer. So when I received a promo of their latest release I have high hopes; I mean with bands like Bowel Stew, CBT, Haemorrhage, Stoma, Hymen Holocaust (etc) in their roster they definitely have a sense for quality. So why the urge all of a sudden to release a subpar deathcore album? Sure, Stillbirth is labeled as grindcore, but there’s not a whole lot of grinding going on. I think they’re trying to sound original, having a laugh and not take things so seriously. But what you wind up with is a mishmash of genres, not really performing any of them extremely well.

"Riot auffer buehne" starts off with an extremely heavy slamming death metal section, offering a very tasty headbanger friendly tempo and supreme piglet squeals. But suddenly you don’t really know what to think as tons of hardcore is thrown in, pretty much to the point of classifying it as metalcore. The main vocals turn out to be crusty hardcore screams instead of gurgling gore. Moving on to the next track (don’t worry, I won’t make this a track by track review, just trying to make a point here) "Faces of meth" it starts off as nu-metal, for crying out loud, only to disintegrate to a somewhat old school grindcore recipe, which in turn is ruined by more metalcore. If we jump forward a bit to "Stoner boner" you’ll suddenly hear a Rage Against the Machine-ish guitar thingie, utterly annoying clean vocals, hardcore choirs and whatnot. I mean what the hell is going on, this isn’t grindcore.

I have absolutely no idea what to make of this. They mix grindcore, nu-metal, metalcore, death metal and so much crap it doesn’t make sense. There are only a few tracks where they really show off their blasting skills and sound any good. There’s certainly nothing wrong with their skills, they can definitely handle their instruments, and the sound is pretty good as well. But this mixture of Devourment, Napalm Death, Born From Pain, Slipknot, Linkin Park, Sick of it All and Black Flag just makes it all too diverse. It’s annoying.

Originally written for http://www.mylastchapter.net