Rotgod chronology: 2021

2021 was the year Rotgod was finally launched.

I spent the first half of the year finishing work on "Sonic degeneracy". I finished mixing in march. I finished mastering in june.

On june 24, I announced the project on my personal Facebook/Instagram profiles, generating a lot of hype. On june 27, I created Rotgod's official social media pages, and on june 30 I announced the release of the first few digital singles.

On july 12, I released the extended single "Before the impact...", along with the official video for the song "Denial of nature" - both working as introductions to Rotgod's sound and style: the feedback was remarkable from the get-go, especially for a first release.

On august 10, single/video "Sybaritic metal" came out and performed even better, spreading around the web and gaining traction and praise everywhere.

Most notably, the "Sybaritic metal" video was rather well-received by the italian audience, due to its contents focused on trashy/national humor, going hand-in-hand with the song title inspired by the controversial figure of Andrea Diprè (known for using the word "sybaritic" quite regularly). Roughly two weeks after the video's release, it had already reached 500 views; within a few months, it reached 1000 views - all this without any substantial promotion.

This also led to the rather comical and surreal episode of coming into direct contact with Diprè himself (who had just been released after spending one month locked up in a german prison): first, on Rotgod's Instagram page, he left some rather odd comments (most likely under the influence of some unidentified drug); then, he even re-uploaded the "Sybaritic metal" video on his own official page, gaining exactly 500 likes (all that, in spite of Rotgod's sound being fairly tough to the ears of dipreistic audiences) just before the profile got banned due to the ruthless reports made by Diprè's arch nemesis, the diabolical "Diva del Tubo".

In the midst of all these events (finishing mixes and releasing early material), I also kept writing new music - finally wrapping up some songs I had started writing (veeeery slowly) over the past years, and also starting to write some new tracks such as "Insipid metal" (an attack against the current state of the metal/hardcore scene - a sentiment that, with the return of live music post-COVID, would only grow stronger in me over the following years).

After getting high on trash and thrash all at once with "Sybaritic metal", the final part of the year saw the release of other two singles.

On october 5, "Paranoid Superstitious Schizoids" came out: much more oriented towards a noisy brand of thrashcore/grindcore compared to previous releases, it also featured the Schizo cover "Psycho terror" - a homage both to one of my biggest musical influences, and a band that placed the city of Catania on the map of worldwide underground metal back in the 80s. The cover was well-received by the band's hardcore fanbase.

On december 8, "Organic machine" was released: the rawest, fiercest, most anti-commercial single out of the four I had released up until then. Unlike the previous releases, this was indeed a fairly overlooked release that performed quite poorly at the time it came out - gaining fewer streams and only being re-evaluated over time, also thanks to the release of the "Sonic degeneracy" album.

But at the time, the album's release was scheduled RIGHT AT THAT VERY POINT. A gigantic, sonically extremist double album, to be released with such uncertain, mixed feedbacks.

What to do next?

2020 • Index • 2022

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