Rottrevore (USA) - "Copulation Of The Virtuous And Vicious" 7", 1991

Its hard to imagine nowadays that Relapse Records was once a good label. Releasing a string of excellent death metal and grindcore 7"s in the early 90s, Relapse proved to be one of the best labels for extreme metal along with Century Media, Nuclear Blast and Earache. In the first 20 Relapse releases, the band released material by Incantation, Monstrosity, Repulsion, Destroy, Deceased and Amorphis. Compared with only ten years down the road, it seems almost unfathomable that a label would decline so far. Their roster now is a joke and shows that the label prioritizes trend hopping and maximizing their profits in what is supposed to be an underground scene devoted to playing honest music that is anything but trendy. The fellow aforementioned record labels also went the same route, and proved that not even death metal is exempt from the presence of business in the music "industry".

With that slight aside, Rottrevore's "Copulation Of The Virtuous And Vicious" was one of Relapses' first releases, clocking in at #10. Reprising one track off of the classic "The Epitome of Pantaglia" demo, this 7" is four monstrous tracks of extremely heavy death metal. The second wave of death metal is marked by lots of downtuning; low, gutteral vocals, extremely heavy and cavernous guitar sounds, and this 7" is no exception. The sound here is absolutely massive, visceral and absolutely flooring, and the band goes back and forth between faster, almost grindcore speeds, and slow dirging riffs, almost reminiscent of the first Incantation album. This isn't quite the "riff-salad" type of death metal which would become popular a few years later, but is far more complex than the basic straight forward three chord/three riff songs that characterized the first wave of death metal. The result is an unrelenting, pummelling recording which can easily hold its own with the rest of the Relapse catalog at the time - certainly not an easy feat.

After this 7", Rottrevore released another excellent 7", "Fornication in Delirum", and a full length, "Iniquitous", which reprised many of the tracks from the 7"s and the demo. While I personally would give the edge slightly to the non-LP material, all of the Rottrevore material is outstanding and deserves to be tracked down. The non-LP material has been reissued several times; the Relapse 7" appears on the Relapse Singles Series, volume 3 CD, a rather poor sounding bootleg which contains the 7"s, the demo and some live tracks (my introduction to the band), and the best option - Necroharmonic's reissue "Disembodied" which contains the 7"s, the demo, and two compilation tracks from the "Son of Bllleeeeaaauuuurrrrgghhh!" 7" and "Pantalgia" LP. The original 7" on Relapse fetches about $10 - 15, and can still be easily found.

Shortly after this recording, Relapse, Nuclear Blast, Century Media and Earache all went down the drain. The ultra-heavy style of death metal eventually became a parody of itself when bands started turning into Suffocation clones, lbut for the first few years of the 1990s the style yielded some truly excellent recordings and bands, Rottrevore being one of the best.