Date: September 6th, 2022
Label: Deformeathing Production
Time to visit the country of my birth has come. Well, Rzeszów lies in the eastern part of Poland, actually quite near to the border with Ukraine, so this is not too near to Bydgoszcz (my home-city). By the way, I know the creativity of this band since their second demo, so I was very excited when I got to know Epitome finally after seven long years of releasing something! As I know they had huge problems with line-up and this is probably the main reason why “ROTend” is their fifth full-length and ninth release (one of them is released 2015 compilation of both demos). Anyways, more about that you’ll read in the interview I plan to do with Kishka – hopefully it’ll be soon.
That’s why I’m not going to use any more biographic facts, even if it’d make this review much longer… Hehehehehe… Epitome always played and still plays death/grind. Of course with time it changed and evolved. But this is a review released by Deforeathing Production September, 9th last year “ROTend” and not some article with analysis of all their stuff, contemplating what band influenced them more on this or another stuff and shits like that. The only important thing here is describing as well as possible the last masterpiece of Epitome. It contains seventeen tracks of music I told you about before and don’t think to repeat these two words once again. So I don’t think and even doubt it was accurate to write it once again. The truth is in my opinion the place of both terms should be in another order, even if this is to be honest pure academic problem with not too huge meaning when it’s about meritum. Anyways, in my opinion there’s little more Grind then Death, at least stricte musically, in creativity of this quintet, even if the album was recorded by three of them, coming from Rzeszów.
At first it’s quite subtle and you can even think you’ll have some kind of doom or so to do. But after more or less thirty seconds everything’s as clear as a day. I mean, music butchery begins! Guys run it brutal as hell and don’t take any prisoners. Tempo mostly is, in case of this sub-genre of our beloved music I have to use words: of course, fast. But this is absolutely not something I’d call as faster as better playing! You can recognize both the technical skills of musicians and the fact they’re thinking during creation of individual tracks. They’re not too short, but at the same time long enough to make the listener able to notice what I wrote two lines before. This is the best hearable in guitar and drums work, but believe me that bassist also does a very good job on this field. Anyways, the whole full-length takes thirty minutes and twenty seven seconds and it runs too quickly, I guess.
Fortunately both on CD player and even on digital portals with videos/music there’s possibility to repeat it once again and once again and…, which I’ve been doing as well since a few days ago. Well, if it wasn’t as excellent stuff as it is I probably wouldn’t do it and wrote this review in much shorter time. On the oldest portal with videos I found one comment I totally agree with and actually after reading this I have no fucking idea what the hell for my review isn’t like that, what for I’m writing it and writing and… Now I quote it: “Short and to the point, just like death/grind should look like”. So, it seems I’m just some bloody workaholic when it’s about my, let’s call it, journalistic activities and I’m too stupid to write one sentence like this one I quoted a moment ago and just enjoy the music. Well, what to do…? You can’t teach old dogs new tricks, it seems. Anyways, I recommend this album, and also the older ones of Epitome, to all who like short and to the point, but at the same time technically advanced music. The rest shouldn’t even touch this. Well, to be honest I think cover art can scare them off quite effectively and they’ll be not interested even in reading this review as well.
