Band:	Void Rot
Album:	Descending Pillars
Style:	Doom death metal
Release date:	September 11, 2020
A review by:	RaduP

01. Descending Pillars
02. Upheaval
03. Liminal Forms
04. Delusions Of Flesh
05. Inversion
06. The Weight Of A Thousand Suns
07. Monolith (Descending Pillars, Pt. II)

It's not that common for a band to get this much hype before their first full-length, so what's the deal with Void Rot?

Thankfully we were able to get on the hype train quite early instead of jumping on after everybody else already has. We covered their debut EP, and their split with Atavisma, so kudos to us, I guess. But even more kudos to Void Rot for managing to generate so much hype in a genre that has slowly but surely getting more stale even if it lived through a resurgence of sorts. Now that the potential shown in the two releases is being put to the full-length test, what will come of Void Rot?

For one, Descending Pillars features none of the tracks previously released on the EP or the split, which is a pretty good thing since both of them were produced by Adam Tucker anyway, so a re-recording would've been futile. Instead we get about 40 minutes worth of new death doom. More death than doom, obviously, but more doom than most death doom anyway. So expect most of it to sit in that mid-paced area, with dissonant riffs and low growls. You know the drill.

Yeah, you know the drill. Uhh. Yeah. You won't get any surprises. Well, I mean, I wasn't really expecting any and I was just expecting more of the filthy death doom sound of the two releases, but stretched out over a longer runtime, but I kinda have to say that I'm glad this album is only 40 minutes long, because Void Rot certainly had the chops to make amazing EPs, but I'm left pretty unimpressed the more I listen to it. I can't really put my finger on what it is, since it does have a little bit of variety in pace, and doom death is a genre I generally love, and I've seen nothing but high praise for them, so I feel like the odd one out for feeling like all the ingredients for something great are there, but the soup still doesn't taste good. I want this to feel as crushing and monolithic as I hoped it would be. Maybe they need other people behind the production. Maybe they need to up their songwriting skills. Maybe there's too much similar music out there. Maybe Covid made me lose my taste.

I'm still not entirely off the hype train, I'm glad that this seems to appeal to a lot of people, and I do encourage our readers to give it a shot.