Jungle Rot

Slaughter The Weak

(c)(p)1998 Pavement Music Inc.

Review by Neil St.Laurent

Thanks to Pavement for the CD

It is very easy to see an album and dismiss it because of a very unintentionally humorous cover, such as the cover of "Slaughter The Weak" which depicts "Sgt. Rot" (a character from the unique merchandise offering of the Jungle Rot comic book), standing among the slaughtered bodies of his Vietnamese enemies. Of course, opening the disc case and seeing the bodies of real humans lying around isn't quite as humorous. The combination is kind of confusing however...

Beyond the comic book, Jungle Rot is from the rotting surface flesh down to the dismembered bones, an old school death metal band. "Slaughter The Weak" is an expected collection of muddy guitar driven music providing the foundation for vocalist Dave Matrise to growl away delivering explicit details of tortured and killed victims and a general hellish darkness descending upon mankind -- as mentioned before, very typical old school death metal.

In the very typical sound achieved, it would be alright to say that the production was good, but somewhere within the mundane are several unexploited riffs that with better production could have delivered a more aggressive and intense album. The band certainly has the ability to produce some upbeat rhythms and original riffs, but everything has been produced as though no component were better than the others. Rather unfortunate.

If you can handle yet another old school death metal release, or you need an example of how bad production can hurt potentially good music, then you may wish to pick up Jungle Rot's "Slaughter The Weak".

Jungle Rot is:
Rob Panoola - Drums
Dave Matrise - Vocals, Guitar
Jim Bell - Guitar, Backing Vocals
Mike Legros - Bass

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