News: ROTGUT - Return With '8 oz. Cantrip'

7 days ago
2 min read

MetalCrawlspace.com - Seattle’s ROTGUT are already back at it.

Only months after dropping their debut EP 24 oz. Cantrip, the black ’n’ thrash ’n’ roll quartet return with 8 oz. Cantrip—a four-track follow-up that digs even deeper into their beer-stained, occult-laced chaos. If the first release kicked the cellar door open, this one drags something half-formed into the daylight and dares it to survive.

According to the band, these songs predate ROTGUT itself:

“Before ROTGUT was formed, we still wrote music in our concrete, lightless hell. Raw, dogged, but not yet Rotgut. Four tracks that kick-started the oeuvre. We’re bringing them out of the dark so they can rot in the light of day.”

That pretty much sums it up.

ROTGUT operate in the grime-caked alley between black metal venom and crossover thrash velocity, wired through crust punk energy and a very deliberate love of horror trash culture. Their sound channels the reckless spirit of Midnight, the unhinged theatrics of Gwar, and the ripping aggression of The Crown, while maintaining their own basement-born personality.

The lore behind ROTGUT reads like a fever dream scrawled on the inside of a dive bar bathroom stall. Dumpster births. Concrete cellars. Incantations gone wrong. A ritual meant to summon Nyarlathotep instead yields two screaming homunculi tearing through cases of Natty Daddy before hazmat suits shut the whole thing down. It’s absurd. It’s excessive. It fits the music perfectly.

Formed in Winter 2024, allegedly under the direction of a faceless shadow organization, ROTGUT exists to shred across the U.S. and beyond with a hybrid of extreme metal, rock ’n’ roll swagger, and crust-punk abrasion. There’s no polish here. There’s velocity, filth, hooks buried under distortion, and a sense that the band is fully aware of the chaos they’re cultivating.

24 oz. Cantrip is streaming now on Spotify, Apple Music, and Bandcamp, and it’s also available as a limited-edition VHS-style cassette—because of course it is.

8 oz. Cantrip continues the descent.