‘Seedless fields, resource extraction, limitless yields, depletion inaction, betrayed by brothers, extinction distraction, consume the mother’ (Paradise / Parasite)

Growth. Always growth.  And who is this growth for? It simply filters into the same overflowing pockets.  It is a remorseless cycle that sees a planet and its people sucked dry by the bloated, parasitic pursuit of endless consumption.  As political philosopher Nancy Fraser so evocatively suggests, ‘Like the ouroboros that eats its own tail, capitalist society is primed to devour its own substance’.  Now, let Cell Rot be your guide to our ever-bleaker future.

Cell Rot, who feature members of Gather, Graf Orlock, and Reivers among others, have been building an impressive body of work since their 2018 debut, Violent Spirals.  And Parasite, the Oakland band’s third 12-inch, sees them in typically uncompromising form.  Their sound is rooted in darkly metallic crust, but it is also laced through with influences drawn from burly straight-up hardcore, power violence, and even a dash of anarcho-punk.

The lacerating guitar tone is cleaner, and yet somehow simultaneously filthier, than this description might typically allow and the rhythm section packs an enviable bounce amid the furious blast beat eruptions.  Meanwhile, the demonically growled vocals unleash their desolate allegorical unpacking of cannibal capitalism and a world being slowly suffocated by greed.

From the tension dripping, feedback saturated opening to Good Morning that will have pits twitching in eager anticipation, the intensity doesn’t drop for even a moment from the bruising groove of Shadow People to the swaggering brutality of Earth-Eating Growth, before a vocal appearance from Mae Toon (Tørsö / Urban Sprawl) amid the sludge-mired climax to Nothing’s Coming brings proceedings to a wonderfully savage close.