Good Gawd Almighty! Rat King is rushing down the ramp with a steel chair in hand looking to break some bones and raise some hell! These death metal/grindcore maniacs from Seattle, WA come charging at the metal world with a relentless and unforgiving attitude on their new EP, “Santa Hipocresía.”
I remember reviewing their full-length album, “Vicious Inhumanity,” back in 2020 which I thought was a solid album that featured a deafening selection of face shredding death metal/grindcore. However, this new release is almost a completely different beast and sounds even more vicious in terms of the band's delivery and the overall presentation. Once you start listening to the album’s first track, “Santa Hipocresía,” you are instantly thrown into this pit of extreme sounding carnage that hits you with a flurry of fatal punches. Throughout the release the guitar playing and drumming proves to be on point, capturing the band’s utterly brutal approach.
There are moment where one might feel as though the riffs are a bit simplistic and that the arrangements are nothing innovative, however, the passion and adrenaline pumping ferocity is what hooked me throughout the entire EP. I felt like the guitar playing on this album was able to get the job done, especially when setting up those moments of intense blast beats which created a monumental rush of sickening brutality. Track number two, “Maldición Del Alma,” brought a massive amount of aggression for such a short track and I thought the vocals perfectly captured the gruesome devastation that seemed to come crashing in from all around. You hear that same brutal mentality on other tracks like, “False Prophet,” and “Morboso,” which also contain chainsaw like guitar riffs and those ear obliteration drum parts.
As someone who feels like a fair portion of modern death metal and grindcore bands attempt to record “brutal” music yet end up writing very forgettable albums, I was extremely pleased with how Rat King went about recording this release. Also, the band seems to have a strong and tight grasp on their overall sound, which I thought was executed extremely well. I believe we have reached a point in the extreme metal world where as much as we would like new bands to be ground breaking or innovative masterminds, we actually just want artists to deliver albums that leave an impact and sound like they weren't recorded by a bunch of drunk yahoos. No bullshit, this album is a mighty statement and Rat King is definitely an artist that I recommend checking out.
Check out the song "False Prophet" below:
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Great review Robby. You're really cranking them out lately.
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