“The Rebirth” is only the third album in total from long-lasting US Death Metal masters DETERIOROT, and the band’s first sign of life since “The Faithless”, its predecessor from 2010. The reason is quite simple: DETERIOROT’s vocalist, guitarist and songwriter Paul Zavaleta isn’t a fulltime musician and therefore doesn’t have to follow the rules of the music business, which often demands at least one new album every single year. I really like that, because every band that goes against the grain in one way or another has my fullest support! And before you start to protest now and demand more than just half an hour of new music after such a long period of time, let’s face the facts: there is no denying that there’s definitely way too many bands, projects, labels and releases out there nowadays, with absolutely no end in sight, which makes it impossible to keep track of everything that’s going on. Quantity reigns over quality for several years already and a lot of hidden gems sadly often get overlooked because of that. Yes, it sucks! So, instead of already reviewing the 33rd album from DETERIOROT, which probably wouldn’t be able to live up to their glorious past anymore anyway, we can put on “The Rebirth” and enjoy eight impressive new tracks (plus a short instrumental intro, with an overall very doomy atmosphere), which still transport that particular feeling, that made the young and hungry Death Metal scene from the early ’90s so exciting. This isn’t your typical modern plastic production with a sterile sound that was compressed to the max, but gritty, rotten old school Death Metal with a great guitar sound and very natural sounding drums. The music is still a well balanced mix of midtempo stuff, with some doomy elements and fast outbursts incorporated here and there. A band that comes pretty close in style has always been INCANTATION, but that’s pretty natural I guess, since both bands started out around the same time and have similar musical roots. On “The Rebirth” there’s two songs in particular that evoked that particular same feeling to me this time. First of all there’s the album opener, ‘Dark Embrace’, which is build on a similar riff that you hear in the chorus of the INCANTATION classic ‘Profanation’, while the follow-up, ‘Return To Rot’, is a fast, straight forward punching crusher in the vein of tracks like ‘Eternal Torture’. But DETERIOROT is by no means a cheap INCANTATION copy, as you’ll quickly recognize when you listen to the album in its entirety. Some ROTTREVORE brutality shines through here and there as well, and I also detected some “Dawn Of Possession” era IMMOLATION (the leading riff in ‘A Nameless Grave’ for example reminds me of ‘Those Left Behind’), while the groovy riff of the great ‘Reanimate’ immediately makes you want to bang your head, raise your fist up in the air and go completely nuts. The song is just perfect to get crowds going at shows! But I think there’s really no need to talk about each single track on the album here, since none of them does disappoint and they are all of a similar high quality. One thing that makes DETERIOROT stand out from the masses are he vocals, which are mostly in a very deep, dark and grim Death Metal style and only partly as guttural as all the other Death Metal vocalists out there that followed INCANTATION’s legacy over the years. And the icing on the cake is the killer, almost Dan Seagrave like, artwork of “The Rebirth”, which was created by Iwenk Art (you can check out more of his work at this location). To me it’s the best the band ever had since their 2016 re-release of “In Ancient Beliefs”! So, to sum it up: if you’re an old school Death Metal fan that couldn’t care less about the majority of the releases that came out the last couple of years, make sure to give “The Rebirth” a listen! I bet you’ll immediately buy a copy afterwards! More about DETERIOROT at www.facebook.com/deteriorot, label contact: www.facebook.com/xtreemmusic666