Trench Rot - Dragged Down to Hell

TRENCH ROT - Dragged Down to Hell (NIHILISTIC HOLOCAUST - demo 2013)

Fuckin crap… it is the second time I write this review; I thought that the one I wrote earlier this year has been published long time ago, but it turned out it wasn’t… and that I couldn’t find it anywhere. Well, no problem there though! At least it gives me an opportunity to listen to “Dragged Down to Hell” once more, as this is just truly killer and awesome demo and I can certainly say that Trench Rot did release one of my favourite demo cassettes of the year. The band is still quite new, formed probably recently, as “Dragged Down to Hell” is only the debut of these four guys… but damn, the music sounds just fantastic and certainly Trench Rot doesn’t sound like yet another mediocre band in the crowd. They are not like these…

The demo is rather short, with only three songs and twelve minutes of music on the clock. But for fuck sake, each of these three tracks is just awesome and I cannot stop banging my head, when such wonderful sounds of old school, traditional death metal start devastating my hearing. There’s nothing uncommon and original about this band; their music is traditional to the bone and has been explored many times by many bands before. But what is so awesome about “Dragged Down to Hell” is that Trench Rot simply composed three absolutely crushing songs, which are equally great to some songs of the bands from which they probably have been taking influences from… I can hear a lot of passion and enthusiasm towards this music from these guys; they have this feeling and that skill of composing killer death metal and making it sound powerful, energetic, but also atmospheric, with its dark, horror mood. I think that Trench Rot have been equally influenced by the bands from several different regions of the world: the most obvious resemblance is in my opinion Asphyx (also because the vocalist sounds a lot like Martin van Drunen… but that is not a complain; Steven Jansson has truly awesome growling vocals), and the Dutch scene in general (with bands like Acrostichon, Pentacle, early Pestilence and Thanatos)… then there’s a strong resemblance here and there to Bolt Thrower and finally also to the Swedish death metal legendary scene. And everything is topped with the necessary dose of two of the greatest bands ever – Autopsy and “Scream Bloody Gore” era Death. Put all these bands together and you’ll get “Dragged Down to Hell”. Three songs, each is just superb, but my favourite is probably “Gallery of the Dead”, but that doesn’t mean that “Dragged Down to Hell” and “Trapped Under Treads” are any less exciting and killer… No, not at all. Fuck, you know what? I love this demo so much that I will give it a perfect score… and if no one will release it on 7’EP then I will fuckin do it! Keep your eyes open for Trench Rot – killer, killer band!

Final rate: 100/100