Rot Shrine — Death to the King of Salem
Norwegian solo project Rot Shrine is somewhere between dungeon synth and bedroom black metal. They are releasing their first recordings this year in 2025, and their full-length on Polypus Records is called Death to the King of Salem,
The album opens with a carnival tune from a detuned vintage horror soundtrack synth, establishing a tragically absurd vaudeville air. The vintage vibe continues on the next track, which is something like electro circa 1982 with a ghostly black metal vocal in the reverberant background, a rather raw attempt at 'cold' or grim synth pop which succeeds through its earnestness.
The third track "Dungeon Crawling Through the End" brings the noisy guitars I expected from the band name and visual presentation of the album, mostly operating closer to a mid-paced rock tempo, with occasional blast beats from the programmed drums. This is clearly a beginner-level project, with rough musicianship (uneven strumming), and very cheap "practice amp" sounding distortion, but I think there's a certain charm to it as well. The whimsicality of choosing different styles for each track shows a genuine interest in different sounds and a wide range to the musician's creative vision. The distorted passages have a Darkthrone-esque feeling. The song "The Squire and the Mouse" contains an (awkward) attempt at clean vocals, and synth pads underneath the guitars.
Once the metal section of the album begins, it's mostly metal from there. The album generally begins to seem grating and comical before the 40-minute runtime is over. The words "ain't takin no more shit!" are repeated throughout the song "Order of the High Court", and the album seems to have a sort of macho bravado better suited to mosh metal music like nu metal or metalcore than black metal, with "Let's fucking go!" shouts in the breakdowns. To complain and say the guitar was thin, or its harshness fatiguing, may seem redundant considering the nature of bedroom black metal in general, but in general most of the songwriting does not present anything deep or evocative either; the album is noisy, but not necessarily dark or esoteric in tone.
Goth stylings only really re-appear in one moment in the final, 9-minute track, and it's the best part of the album easily, with a sort of heroic folk melody from the synth, and a full section of sung lyrics. The singing is shy and off-key, but I get a definite feeling from this part, and from the despairing, suicidal lyrics.
This is a recording that reminds me of some of my first-ever musical experiments in my younger years. For this reason, I am sympathetic to it, but I would not say they have reached the point of creating something listenable yet. There are a couple of interesting atmospheric elements on the album, but they are interspersed between anti-climactic, over-simple metal tunes with basic power chord progressions, with a meatheaded aggression and no atmosphere to speak of. Even with the rawness of the playing and production, the album could have been significantly more enjoyable if the emotion and cinematic progression of the album had been more thought out.