Holy crap this is an absolute lost classic. I hadn't heard of these champs until I got the JL America comp called "Brutal Aggression." What I love about a lot of JL America's releases is that they captured a very specific era in death and black metal that was and is very representative of the past and the future of what would become of the genres and bands that JL America represented. Back when JL America seemed to clamor to get these releases out, it was a level playing field between bands like Immortal and Goatlord, or Masters Hammer and Nokturnel. In addition, it wasn't only the label that was representing the US and European scene so honestly, but each of the bands represented their own niches within a plethora of genres in such a remarkably bold manner that each JL America and Turbo USA release still stands as a pertinent bookmark in the timeline of metal. Immortal's "Diabolical Fullmoon Mysticism" represented the budding Norwegian scene that would grow to dominate the black metal scene. Let me get back to Deteriorate. What my point boils down to is that "Rotting in Hell" stands as a good example of what a lot of great underground death metal bands were doing in 92 / 93.
To start things off the right way, "Rotting in Hell" opens with a morbid intro of distorted screams over an ambient death wind. After about a minute of this the pummeling death machine that is Deteriorate rolls into town. The excellent production on this is immediately evident. The drums are clear as a bell, the guitar tone is thick, crunchy, and powerful. The vocals are artfully given a great stereo trick here the left speaker is a millisecond delayed from the right. It does for the vocals what reverb or delay does but without compromising any clarity and the decay is immediate. For the rest of the album you're going to bang your head the entire time as "Rotting in Hell" offers up a bottomless bucket of chunk, sludge, and sick melody. Your dinner also comes with a complementary choice of blastbeats, skank sections, or hooky breakdowns.
All in all I think its sort of redundant for me to dissect this album and tell you all about every single second of it. Its just an absolute death metal classic and you'd be a total fool not to pick it up if you ever get the chance. The chance might be rare because JL America stuff is sort of rare, but right now Deathgasm Records has a ton of JL America stuff on sale after he unearthed a bunch of it in a recent buyout. Also I don't have a weblink for an official Deteriorate site but I recently heard they are still together with a different vocalist.
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