From Brazil comes Rotborn, this week’s Demo:listen feature band. Formed in late 2020, Rotborn play a hard-hitting, sonically-devastating, straight-forward kind of savage death metal, not unlike the early works of their legendary compatriots, Krisiun. Unlike Krisiun, Rotborn are just getting started, and from the sounds of their debut eponymous single, released just a few weeks ago, they’re primed and ready to spread like a conflagration of blast beats, volcanic growls and amplified destruction.
Here, Vitor Caricati, the band’s guitarist, explains how Rotborn came together: “Well, Luis Satan, Jeferson and I (Vitor) have played together in distinct bands before in our town. Our drummer Nestor is from a different state in Brazil. He comes from Bahia (Northeast of the country) but he moved to Sao Paulo’s countryside in early 2017. Jeferson and I play in an oldschool thrash metal band called Overthrash and we have led another death/grind band which hasn’t officially released any material, Luis Satan is the singer for a more modern-kind metal band called D.O.S. and Nestor still performs drums for his band from Bahia, Escarnium.
“Said that, Rotborn came together because Jeferson became friends with Nestor and they had a mutual desire to keep playing fast and heavy music. They tried a different line-up with other musicians but it didn’t work out. So, in the end of 2020, Jeferson heard that I was interested in playing heavy music again, so he invited me to join them in a new project. Afterwards, we looked for a singer and then Luis Satan offered himself to become our singer and things finally started working out.”
Genocidal Resolution
According to Vitor, when he joined the band, “The two songs [that compose the Genocidal Resolution EP] already had their instrumental parts brought to us by Nestor, so it was easy to take the songs to another level, adding the personal influences from each member of the band. So, I wrote the lyrics as soon as our singer joined us and then we started working on it and we kept on rehearsing songs until they started sounding tight enough.”
Vitor explains how democratically the name Rotborn about. “It came from a brainstorming session with tons of suggestions,” he says. “We had those names but we couldn’t decide which one to pick up, so we took the decision for the ‘public’: we did a ‘voting campaign’ on the internet, just for close friends, and then Rotborn won first prize. Rotborn represents the state of the things nowadays, I mean, we’re destined to be born in this era of chaos, bigotry and human rottenness and impending doom, so we thought it suits us well.”
In case you haven’t noticed, Rotborn are a political band. And they’re not afraid to admit it, but that’s not all they are either. “In fact, we’re not only focusing on political matters in our lyrics,” says Vitor. “We can write about anything we want to, as far as it makes sense to all of us. However, the critical actual moment of mankind is very inspirational for writing ‘pissed-off’ kind of lyrics, so it was a straightforward process writing these ones. Current Brazilian reality is a great source of inspiration, but you can expect different subjects in our upcoming lyrical content.”
According to Vitor, “The recording sessions [for Genocidal Resolution] were done in different places: The drums and vocals were recorded in a good studio whereas the guitars and bass were recorded at home studios. The mixing and mastering process were done at the same Studio where we recorded drums and vocals (RMS ESTUDIO). We made this way because it was more practical for all of us.”
Vitor says, “Sadly, due to the COVID19 pandemic, we haven’t been able to perform live yet so we are eager to do it as soon as possible. Of course, we have the release of a ful- length in our plans for this year and we’re working on it. We also have a European tour as support act of mighty Escarnium in September 2022 and we really expect the pandemic thing to come to an end in order not to fuck up with the tour.” We can only hope!
In closing, Vitor says, “Well, thank you so much for the support given. It means a lot to us. And, for those about to blast, we salute you.”
Preorder Genocidal Resolution from Redefining Darkness right now!
