Two former members of Italy’s Ephel Duath—vocalist Luciano Lorusso George and guitarist Davide Tiso—have assembled a new progressive death metal quartet called Red Rot, and are offering up a new video for the track “Dysmorphia.” The song is a moody minute-and-a-half crusher that’s clean, well-executed and accompanied by a haunting video starring actor Satya Schulberg experiencing some sort of psychotic disconnect. The fast-paced, frantic editing and strobe-like lighting perfectly mimic the pace of a track that begins broodingly and erupts into a pummeling crescendo.
“Dysmorphia” is one of 17 tracks—most similarly brief—on Red Rot’s upcoming debut, Mal de Vivre, which is set for release on August 26, via Svart Records. In addition to Lorusso George and Tiso, the band features Americans Ian Baker (bass) and Ron Bertrand (drums). Mal de Vivre was written, recorded and mixed between October 2020 and May 2021. Mixing and mastering was handled by Jamie King at the Basement Recording Studio in Winston-Salem, NC. It will be available on CD, two vinyl variants and digitally. You can get your preorder here.
This is what Davide Tiso had to say about the video:
“‘Dysmorphia’ is a song about loosing touch with reality and one’s appearance. It felt natural to make a video of a man trapped in his own mind. Body dysmorphic disorder is a condition that brings an individual to experience episodes where self image is regularly altered because of trauma. The character in the video is getting ready to leave a motel room, and the whole ninety seconds of the song is pretty much a PTSD flashback of what happened the night before, a complete splitting frenzy that eventually implodes once he’s in front of the mirror.
When I started talking with director Leonardo Candidi and actor Satya Schulberg about the project, we started with Apocalypse Now! and the Martin Sheen breakdown scene. The symbolism of covering one’s eyes with one’s hands is pictured as an attempt to hide from reality and mask one’s appearance. This is both a child-like motion and an ancestral symbol of communication that we thought would embody the inner chaos and quasi breakdown of the story, and it’s included in a way that people would understand without even realizing it.”
