Rotgod chronology: 2025

2025: ten years since starting Rotgod!

There couldn't be any better moment to finally release the aggressive and radical "Raw is the law" EP, recorded over the previous two years together with "Polemics and obscenity": a true sum of Rotgod's artistic/ideological manifesto, having always maintained its allegiance to 80's underground extreme metal, against any trends from the modern pseudo-underground "scene" - which are vehemently attacked in the title-track's lyrics (enhanced by a brilliant lyric video), together with the irreverent "Goth black metal tradcunt" making some rather mean-spirited fun of the so-called "romantic black metal" movement (represented by acts such as Këkht Aräkh, Draugveil and Sentiero dei Principi) and the kids forming its core fanbase.

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The EP was released at midnight on april 26 - exactly ten years since the night I wrote the song "Denial of nature", sort of a symbolic birthday for Rotgod. To emphasize the importance of this anniversary, along with the EP's four new tracks, the digital edition came with a remix/remaster of "Denial of nature" as bonus track - a version originally scrapped in 2021 for not being in line with the sound of other songs from "Sonic degeneracy", and now repurposed to give better emphasis to the wicked riffing from that song compared to the version released back then.

Meanwhile, the physical edition came out as a very limited 30-copies run on 12" vinyl, enriched by special inserts including posters of the EP's and "Sonic degeneracy"'s artworks, a black-and-white 12-pages booklet filled with background info and a long preface, and even a collage made by the mighty Leonardo Pace about Catania's 80's thrashcore scene, which has always been one of Rotgod's main influences (think about bands such as Schizo and Incinerator).

The cover art made by Claudio Elias Scialabba (who previously worked with Bünker 66, Tsubo and One Day in Fukushima), while based on the oh-so-rough sketch I had pitched almost three years prior, is immediately striking in its visual impact and richness in detail (validating the 12" format for the physical edition), and instantly caught the audience's attention towards a record that managed to garner hundreds of streams within a few months, going far beyond any past Rotgod release. Title-track "Raw is the law" instantly became my most streamed track on Spotify, catching the interest of listeners from countries renowned for their historical background in underground extreme metal such as Colombia, Germany and Brazil.

As one more treat to celebrate Rotgod's tenth anniversary, on may 11 I also launched this website - motivated by my desire to have an online platform independent from social media, as an archive for every single Rotgod-related info and historical note, without being restricted by "short form content" oriented parameters and quick expiration dates for anything. The slogan I used to promote the site ("log off social media, start reading!") is clear enough.

Over the course of the summer, I kept striking the iron while still hot. On july 28, a split with the newborn grindcore act Destrypse from Modica was released, bearing the title "Italian grinding noise" and coming with a grotesque cover art that sees italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni rising as a global threat. The split was released by newborn DIY label Sasso Production Records (founded by Destrypse bassist himself) on a 40-copies CD run, compiling the young grinders' short but annihilating first demo "Extermination" together with some more Rotgod gems from the extended digital edition of "Sonic degeneracy" (similar to previous split "Fragments of degeneracy") finally released in physical format - all of them remastered to give a more massive, powerful sound to these older tracks. This time around, in accordance with the nature of this split, the track selection leaned more towards the project's thrashcore/grindcore/noise side - with songs such as "Fake news apocalypse", "Idealism, the fatal bug", "Hell from within", "New age mumbo-jumbo", "Demagogy", "This state sucks" and even the ultra-noisy "Teleological nonsense", along with the iconic Schizo cover "Psycho terror" taken from 2021's digital single "Paranoid Superstitious Schizoids".

2025 also saw the participation to some rather valuable compilations: aside from including the song "Sado-death" (originally part of the "Polemics and obscenity" bilogy) on a compilation for polish-ukranian magazine Metallurg Music, the success of "Raw is the law" opened the possibility of being featured on Imperative Music Global Metal Compilation Vol. 19 together with such names as Kerry King (guitarist of metal legends Slayer) and the ex-members of well-known US thrashers Atrophy, now regrouped under the Scars of Atrophy moniker. I obviously accepted the offer, participating with the most old school song in my entire catalog: "Cute music must die" - a metalpunk banger in full Venom/Warfare/Gehennah style, coming from the "Polemics and obscenity" / "Raw is the law" sessions as well and still unreleased at the time.

While all this happened, I was busy with yet another important task: after moving to a new house the year before, I spent 2025 building, preparing and testing the "Rotcave 2.0" in my basement, after my friend was forced to give away his private rehearsal room. All that, looking forward to record the new full-length album I had written in the past two years: "Desecrate, demystify, desacralize". By the end of the year, the new recording space was 100% operational and ready to start the new sessions with an even rawer, rougher, drier sound than in the past. So I started recruiting musicians once again.

2025 closed with the release, on december 28, of the last song I still had left from the 2022-2024 recording sessions: the ultra-short digital single "Sadistic anti-musical sociopathy" - a sort of "dumpster track" for various ultra-messy noisecore micro-songs built around sharp, blunt sentences, in the vein of early Cripple Bastards.

An outburst that doesn't spare anyone, being the result of way too many years of disillusionment toward people, human relationships, trends, the so-called "underground scene" and the many social forces branding themselves as "subversive" which end up just making our existence worse instead of improving it. All that, embellished (?) by an artwork made by the mighty Elios Eatgrapes (a rather well-known name within the sicilian underground due to his work with bands such as Re-Turds, Psycopath Witch and Tragoidia) - of course always following a crazy-as-fuck concept I tasked him with, which perfectly resonates with the idea of "sadistic anti-musical sociopathy". The end result speaks for itself.