Rotting Empire
Sui Generis

A rotting empire, is it Japan? I suppose those are the most likely candidate, or perhaps they mean the Klingon Empire as they also seem to be in decline. Since 2000, it says on their website and I have to wonder, what have they done in all those years? one EP and one album in 13 years is not what I call productive, perhaps they have been working all these years to perfect this album. But the album cover does not look like 13 years in the making, more like 13 seconds. Same goes for the band logo, was it designed by a child? I may sound mean, but at the same time you have to look critically at all the music that comes out and sure they are probably making better songs than I am capable of and the cover maybe in line with what I can draw but I am not a painter or musician. I am analysing and writing about the stuff, so what can we say about these guys?

Musically it is not a surprise considering how the album looks, it is old school death metal. The singer grunts guttural sounds that makes inaudible words accompanied by smattering drums, the sound is quite massive and more powerful than many in the genre but they might not be taking a full advantage of that. The songs are not that varied which makes the 46 minutes feel rather long, the arthritic tempo of the album is another thing contributing to this fact. The title Sui Generis could mean So Generic because that is what it is, the album is a bit generic. The production is rather good on most accounts, good for the genre that is.

Nah, I can’t really recommend this album, unless of course you are impressed by old school death metal. If you are, you will probably find this impressive. I think that this album is too generic, too bland, too slow and too uninteresting to really bring out the best of the genre. It is a decent debut and decent for the genre but I cannot help feeling that it there is a lot more to this band than what they show here. I may be wrong but I think that Rotting Empire can do better than this.

In the end it is an okay album, the production is very good but the songs are lacking a little. Maybe for the fans of the older school black metal but it is not for me and not for the generic metal fanatic. Simply put, this is not the best album of its kind.

HHHHHHH