Decompose With the Intense Weight of Rot Coven on “Nightmares Devour The Waking World”

Ah shit, here we go again, once more into the frayed edges of extreme music to find catharsis in the intensity of ear-rupturing, cataclysmic, and avant-garde experimentation. I’ll bring the folding chairs and malaise, you bring the snacks and ennui. Together, we will listen and let our bodies decay in a community of death rituals and spoiled flesh, or we can listen to Rot Coven‘s debut physical release, Nightmares Devour The Waking World.

This two-piece band hangs in the realm of noise-saturated death-doom and industrial wings of the extreme music library of the damned, lurking in shadowy halls studying Godflesh, Swans, Primitive Man, Body Void, Ramleh, Throbbing Gristle, and other champions of discordant unpleasures. Their acute musicianship and vast knowledge of all music that makes Slayer seem like Coldplay in comparison is wrought into a metal clanging cathedral of sludge, distortion, and noise that builds over doom-paced beats into monolithic tracks that induce jaw-clenching anxieties while giving the tucked away loathing and contempt in your soul a soundtrack to exercise to.  The result is both relentlessly intense and purifying.

Rot Coven self-released Phase I of this double album on their Bandcamp, previously. However, Nightmares Devour The Waking World compiles Phase I along with the previously unreleased Phase II bringing listeners deeper into the scrap metal caverns of sound that bassist/drummer/vocalist MZ and guitarist DD have assembled from pieces of an uncaring, throwaway culture world.

Formed in 2019, Rot Coven initially wanted to create dark ambient music over doom-style drums, but their shared love of cosmic horror and creeped-out industrial noise soon saw bass, guitar, scrap metal percussion, noise boxes, and processed field recordings work their way into the concept to create something altogether more sinister. At their prettiest, they can almost be considered doomgaze on “Those Who Worship Falling Stars” but ultimately, this is intense music to brood to, vibes for those of us witnessing societal collapse in real time waiting for mother nature to become so inhospitable and for humanity to fall to its own corrupted hubris until all that remains is the waking nightmare of our own destruction.

You can order the CD for Nightmares Devour The Waking World here and follow Rot Coven on Facebook, here.