Now that the "Sonic degeneracy" cycle (2021-2024) is finally over, ROTGOD strikes back with a two-part series of EPs featuring entirely BRAND NEW RECORDINGS that will sink to deeper levels of anti-social nihilism, sickness, filth, decadence and noise while venting out all the rage, burnout, depression, morbid insanity, all-encompassing hatred and disillusionment Noise Maniakk has amassed during the years he spent working on the previous record.

You're not ready.

POLEMICS AND OBSCENITY - PART 1

Type: EP

Release date: October 7, 2024

Formats: Digital

Rotgod's obscene parade of mischievous conspirators

The sick mind behind it all:

Noise Maniakk - songwriting, rhythm/lead guitars, bass (tracks 2, 3, 5, 7, 8), lead/backing vocals, hate manifestos, industrial sound manipulation, morbid kinks and fetishes

And the following accomplices:

Krost von Barbarie - bass/vocals (tracks 3, 6)

Er Magnotta 666 - drums (tracks 3, 4, 5, 7, 8)

Giancarlo Tuccio - drums (tracks 2, 6)

Riccardo Santoro - solo (track 7)

Stephane Lo Sardo - solo (track 5)

All songs written by Noise Maniakk between late 2018 and early 2022.

Recorded between december 2022 and july 2024.

Mixed and mastered by Noise Maniakk & Er Magnotta 666.

Cover art by Noise Maniakk, Shax & Giulia Pace.

POLEMICS AND OBSCENITY - PART 2

Type: EP

Release date: October 28, 2024

Formats: Digital

Rotgod's obscene parade of mischievous conspirators

The sick mind behind it all:

Noise Maniakk - songwriting, rhythm/lead guitars, bass (tracks 2, 3, 4, 5, 8), lead/backing vocals, hate manifestos, industrial sound manipulation, morbid kinks and fetishes

And the following accomplices:

Er Magnotta 666 - drums (tracks 2, 3, 4, 6), synth/keyboard intros (tracks 5, 8), terrorism against San Giorgio and Bontembo

Giancarlo Tuccio - drums (tracks 5, 7, 8)

Riccardo Santoro - solo (tracks 5, 8)

Stephane Lo Sardo - solo (track 4)

Jos Curtis - bass (track 6)

Gabriele Nicotra - bass (track 7), locura, smarmellated lights, straordinari d'aprile (quelli de "Libeccio")

All songs written by Noise Maniakk between late 2018 and early 2022.

Lyrics for "I'm joining the terrorists" (re)written in late 2022.

Lyrics for "Total burnout (taste of Thanatos)" were inspired by the exhausting recording/mixing process for the "Sonic degeneracy" album (2017-2021).

Lyrics for "Renè Ferretti mosh" are based on the italian TV series "Boris" (Fox/Disney+).

Recorded between december 2022 and july 2024.

Mixed and mastered by Noise Maniakk & Er Magnotta 666.

Cover art by Noise Maniakk, Shax & Giulia Pace.

POLEMICS AND OBSCENITY - PART 1 & 2

Type: Compilation

Release date: November 24, 2024

Formats: 2CD

Rotgod's obscene parade of mischievous conspirators

The sick mind behind it all:

Noise Maniakk - songwriting, rhythm/lead guitars, bass (CD1: tracce 2, 3, 5, 7, 8; CD2: tracks 2, 3, 4, 5, 8), lead/backing vocals, hate manifestos, industrial sound manipulation, morbid kinks and fetishes

And the following accomplices:

Krost von Barbarie - bass/vocals (CD1: tracks 3, 6)

Er Magnotta 666 - drums (CD1: tracks 3, 4, 5, 7, 8; CD: tracks 2, 3, 4, 6), synth/keyboard intros (CD2: tracks 5, 8), terrorism against San Giorgio and Bontembo

Giancarlo Tuccio - drums (CD1: tracks 2, 6; CD2: tracks 5, 7, 8)

Riccardo Santoro - solo (CD1: track 7; CD2: tracks 5, 8)

Stephane Lo Sardo - solo (CD1: track 5; CD2: track 4)

Jos Curtis - bass (CD2: track 6)

Gabriele Nicotra - bass (CD2: track 7), locura, smarmellated lights, straordinari d'aprile (quelli de "Libeccio")

All songs written by Noise Maniakk between late 2018 and early 2022.

Lyrics for "I'm joining the terrorists" (re)written in late 2022.

Lyrics for "Total burnout (taste of Thanatos)" were inspired by the exhausting recording/mixing process for the "Sonic degeneracy" album (2017-2021).

Lyrics for "Renè Ferretti mosh" are based on the italian TV series "Boris" (Fox/Disney+).

Recorded between december 2022 and july 2024.

Mixed and mastered by Noise Maniakk & Er Magnotta 666.

Cover art by Noise Maniakk, Shax & Giulia Pace.

Inlay art by Noise Maniakk, Shax, Gore Occulto and Lili (@i_have_no_place_to_hide).

Noise Maniakk's perspective

"Polemics and obscenity" is the byproduct of a crisis.

I was in the midst of recording "Sonic degeneracy", when all of a sudden everything started going to shit. Everything. Both the recordings and my own personal life. Technical issues, musicians quitting, difficulty finding replacements, excessive focus on finishing the record to the point of neglecting everything else, self-imposed frantic paces in the desperate attempt to finish everything by 2019, struggles with university and exams in the meantime, ever-growing stress, a frustratingly mechanical routine, uneasy sleeps, poor/disappointing human relationships, more and more disheartening realizations, progressive isolation in my own bubble, perpetual bleakness, discouragement and a sense of general futility... all these factors came together in a crescendo that reached its climax around fall 2018. I remember being at the bus stop, coming home from university, and taking a selfie that I still keep to this day, which I also included (after warping it with enough effects to make it unrecognizable) in the cover and inner art for "Polemics and obscenity". I looked awful: I had somatized all the stress in the most visible manners - most notably, dermatitis all over my face and huge-as-fuck herpes on my lower lip. I remember I stayed home in the following days, spending most of my time sleeping in bed. This was the start of a total burnout (yeah, you know where I'm going with this) that dragged me for quite a few years into the dreariest form of depression and apathy - from which I'm still not sure I've recovered 100%.

Of course, in such a state of mind, it would be unfair to expect much creativity and productivity from yours truly: first of all, I still was way too hellbent on finishing "Sonic degeneracy" - plus, my burnout had taken all inspiration away. At some point between late summer and early fall 2018, back when I still lived by my usual hyperactive-as-fuck groove, an early short burst of new ideas rushed into my head, just in time to lay down some riffs for what would later become "OK zoomer", "God of the gaps" and (not by accident) "Total burnout (taste of Thanatos)". Shortly after that, I reached my breaking point - with all the exhaustion, the indolence and the general sense of futility that came with it. Work on "Sonic degeneracy" progressed slowly, between endless troubles, uncertain prospects and the constant feeling of fighting a losing battle. A little voice inside my head kept reminding me every day of the absolute futility of dedicating yourself to create anything. So there you have it: amid such conditions, the songs that would later form "Polemics and obscenity" could only develop much more slowly and lazily compared to the ever-flowing stream of ideas from the "Sonic degeneracy" era. As a matter of fact, "Polemics and obscenity" is a work that was partly written by inertia - which explains the rather limited amount of tracks and the tight HC-styled minimalism betrayed by many of them. Over the course of 2019 I wrote almost nothing: I was too low on energy and still too preoccupied with finishing "Sonic degeneracy" to set any other goal in front of me. It would only be later that year, around the time I finished recording for good, that I'd allow myself to start developing some new ideas (such as "IdPol is a waste of time" and "Eternal return"), while still progressing very unevenly due to my inspiration still going up and down and the lack of an overall vision like the one I had for "Sonic degeneracy" (which is why I already knew back then these new songs would be nothing more than EP material). It was only around january 2022 that it all suddenly came together, almost like magic: I managed to regain enough inspiration and mental clarity to finish all the songs I had started (and write one more for a side-project called The Ineffable, but that's another story) and knit them together through some sort of overarching vision (which still remained in a grey area between full-length and EP, alternating new songs with some cover songs that I felt would fit the mood and the narrative I wanted to convey). And so, the two-part series of "Polemics and obscenity" was born: a highly provocative, shock-heavy statement - but also an act of total rejection, disillusionment and surrender.

"Polemics and obscenity" is indeed a violent, pissed off work - but it's an inert, reactive, undiscerning, spiteful kind of pissed off, merely for its own sake and devoid of the underlying messages that you could still find on "Sonic degeneracy": it's pure, raw nihilism without even the confidence in navigating it anymore - thus just finding solace in the delight of causing havoc wherever it happens. Now every staple has truly fallen, and there's no direction left to move towards.

The slightly more hardcore-laden nature of these two EPs fits the mood of the new material like a glove, in its sharp, dry, straightforward violence: not by accident, a song that encapsulates rather well how I was feeling back when I wrote these new tracks is the legendary "Nerorgasmo" - the eponymous anthem by cult italian HC act from Turin (small digression: should I have covered this song as well? Anyhow, the mark of Luca Abort & co. has still been left on the "Polemics and obscenity" artwork: can you spot it?).

Save for the intricate "Eternal return" instrumental (yet another example of compulsive death/thrash riff-mania, briefly coming back from inspiration coma) and weirder, bolder experiments such as "Total burnout" (my final creative flicker to still follow the "Sonic degeneracy" vision, prior to my breakdown in late 2018), all these songs cycle around very few riffs and possess a much more stripped down, bare-bones structure - generally sticking to the usual verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-verse-chorus formula that on the contrary, at the time of writing "Sonic degeneracy", would often be broken and messed with in favor of more "adventurous" compositions (see: "Organic machine"). I won't be candid about it: the reason for this regression is that, in such a state of exhaustion and lazy sluggishness, I did truly lack creativity and divergent thinking. I was literally unable to picture more ambitious song structures in my head, and I often struggled to come up with even a simple bridge or an impactful closure for a song, working with the few good riffs I had left up my sleeve. In fact, at the time, my riff-writing had gotten significantly worse: I remember, some time around 2020, finding myself oftentimes with the head full of weak ass mediocre "rock-style" pseudo-thrash riffs (some of which are still saved in my hard drive - and every time I listen back, I can't help but feel ashamed of coming up with such uninspired dogshit) - and in the midst of all this useless garbage, I had to hang onto the rare few kickass riffs at my disposal, on the basis of which I'd go on to build the new songs (at times even scavenging through unused ideas from the "Sonic degeneracy" era - such in the case of "Insipid metal", which includes one riff dating back to 2017, or "Eternal return" which starts off with some riffs dating back even to 2015). Nevertheless I think this method, as meagre and restrained as it may be (being the byproduct of "times of famine", so to speak), did allow for the natural development of catchier, more immediate tunes compared to "Sonic degeneracy" - since these new songs were based on few hard-hitting ideas with highly memorable motifs: there were fewer ideas, sure, but they were also the best ideas I had at the time, and nothing more than that. Therefore, from a songwriter's perspective, I can ultimately consider myself more than satisfied with "Polemics and obscenity": my only regret is that back then, due to my constant state of emotional numbness, I felt little motivation to chase the underground excesses and extremities that had been the main bulk for "Sonic degeneracy"'s craziest moments - instead relying on more "cagey", safe and polished thrash/hardcore structures (for instance: listening back to "God of the gaps", I even hear a bit of Metallica in there). The only two songs that truly make me feel the same sense of chaotic, unhinged "underground" insanity that originally inspired "Sonic degeneracy" are "Renè Ferretti mosh" and "I'm joining the terrorists" - both of which are conveniently among the last songs I wrote, back when I was finally getting out of my black hole and feeling a little bit euphoric once again.

Lyrics on "Polemics and obscenity" carry all the disgust, the hate and the disillusionment I amassed through those years, not bending the knee to anything and anyone. The tracklist for "Polemics and obscenity" (including the cover songs, whose lyrics are abstracted from their original context, becoming part of the new concept) is a systematic demolition of any existential, social and identitary staple in a person's life: from one's own generation ("OK zoomer") to his political affiliations ("IdPol is a waste of time") to his sentimental relationships (the Cripple Bastards cover "Being ripped off") to God himself ("God of the gaps") to ingroup-outgroup dynamics and so-called "alternative scenes" (Napalm Death's "Lucid fairytale") to sexuality in its conventional, "structured" form (the Swans cover "Sex, God, sex") to the local music scene ("Insipid metal") to human relationships in the broader sense of the term ("I'm joining the terrorists", "Total burnout" and Protector's "Misanthropy") and even to one's own self and flesh ("Sado-death") - until nothing remains but a dreadful final step, carried out by a just-as-dreadful tune by italian legends Necrodeath from 1989's masterpiece "Fragments of insanity": "Choose your death", indeed.

These lyrics are very direct and straight-to-the-throat, not much preoccupied with supporting a thesis or smugly mocking adversaries from a supposed position of superiority (as it was the case on "Sonic degeneracy"), instead just lashing out with utter spite and malice, or at the very least responding to the annoying presences infesting my life at the time - 'cause by that point I had become the underdog. However, in order to complicate such basic, bare-bones tunes (both musically and lyrically), I still wanted to add some elements of "ambiguity" to the tracklist, just like I did with "Sonic degeneracy". For instance, "Eternal return (january 3, 1889 - june 28, 2022)" is an instrumental in the same vein of "After the impact (day 5)" - and yet, judging from the title, it might also qualify as sequel to another older song I'll let you guess by yourselves (along with the meaning of the two dates in parentheses - one being easily identifiable just by googling it, and the other being truly decipherable only by yours truly). Similarly, the Swans cover (so dark and ritualistic in nature) might look at first like a foreign object, hard to relate to the other tracks - but aside from being an awesome song with a terrific atmosphere, it also foreshadows my own track "Sado-death", the song I hold dearest out of all "Polemics and obscenity": yet another "experimental" digression amidst the tracklist (just like "Total burnout") - mixing kickass death/thrash, noise and post-punk in a self-destructive orgiastic vortex that goes hand in hand with the lyrics (which I consider to be some of the most intimate and personal I've ever written, back when I was starting to feel the need to explore some rather "unusual" urges... and you can expect more of these lyrics in the future hehe!).

A separate mention goes to the usage of humor, which on "Polemics and obscenity" is actually very different compared to past releases: when reading such pissed off, negative lyrics (with the exception of "Renè Ferretti mosh", a homage to the amazing italian TV series "Boris" that kept me company through those dark years), you might indeed be hard-pressed to find any traces of the demented, thrashcore-styled irony that was a staple of "Sonic degeneracy". I'm well aware of that. In fact, this time around, humor isn't really intrinsic to the songs themselves, and works more as an ornament or even a "support" to them - always in a trashy/"national-popular" fashion: so of course the "Being ripped off" cover is introduced by none other than mighty italian icon Dario Greggio (an idea I already had in mind way before seeing all these viral YouTube mashups between him and Cripple Bastards), while "I'm joining the terrorists" (written at a time when I really was running out of patience towards people) lifts some quotes from the legendary outbursts of an exhausted Mario Magnotta, after months being persecuted by prank calls. The entirety of "Polemics and obscenity", between one song and the other, is packed to the brim with legendary characters from the italian trash world - all of them screaming, cursing, telling people to fuck off and lashing out against everyone. That's not coincidental: when I started putting together the tracklist for "Polemics and obscenity", that was exactly the state of generalized intolerance and irritation I felt trapped in - and the outbursts from Dario Greggio and Magnotta were my daily bread and butter. Plus - even the other, seemingly more casual inserts (including alleged "Monster of Florence" Pietro Pacciani and TV mascot "il Gabibbo") possess a precise meaning in my mind, being linked to specific memories from those years; for y'all, instead, they'll just remain a bunch of grotesque, surreal skits increasing the amount of insanity and "uncanny valley" within the tracklist - a factor I do always value a lot in my works.

Even the cover art fits this concept, being a parody of the artwork for The Beatles' "Revolver" (a beautiful record I grew up with) in a "cursed"/"uncanny" version, with inverted colors and a gigantic photo-collage including the musicians who played on the EPs plus various grotesque characters - many of which do also appear between the songs (most notably Dario Greggio, Mario Magnotta, Richard Benson, "il Gabibbo" and the "Boris" cast), while others are completely thrown at random... or so I'll let you believe.

Aside from the cover art, I did also put great care in the inner artwork for the CD edition, to make it look as shocking and over the top as possible: I instructed Gore Occulto to make a montage that would look even more extreme and iconoclastic than our previous desecration to the Holy Shroud at the time of "Jesus Christ pornostar" - this time around, really playing with fire by targeting Catania's folklore - and I filled the booklet with disturbing drawings and "exhibitionist" photos of mine, often depicted in the middle of nice little plays that tie in (well... quite literally) with the "Sado-death" concept. Definitely a narcissistic, egocentric, visually striking choice that may have left many people shocked and perplexed, since I assume they weren't really keen on seeing me nude and/or tied up - but this is exactly why I did it: to disturb and upset them, offending their "good taste", "shame" and "decency", forcing them by surprise to look at something they normally wouldn't want to see, while at the same time asserting my "perverse", "dissolute" nature (as I've always done with my works as Rotgod). On the back of the CD, under the photo depicting me in my birthday suit, there's a famous Marquis De Sade quote that I feel describes me 100% accurately: "Imperious, choleric, irascible, extreme in everything, with a dissolute imagination the like of which has never been seen, atheistic to the point of fanaticism: there you have me in a nutshell, and kill me again or take me as I am, for I shall not change". Well - none more Rotgod indeed.

One more thing: "Polemics and obscenity" was also the first time I found myself working peacefully (at last!) on recordings and mixing, with a final result leagues above any previous release. This time around, my drummer friend - the legendary "Er Magnotta 666" (go figure) - was actively involved in the process: he had spent quite some time working in high-profile recording studios and learning various recording/mixing tricks, thus helping upgrade Rotgod's sound in a crucial way - bringing suggestions both in the equipment department (i.e. finally stable mics and sound cards, unlike the ones I was using at the time of "Sonic degeneracy"), and the mixing/sound design department. Of course I had sharpened my claws too, after working on more than fifty near-unsalvageable mixes for "Sonic degeneracy" - but I'd be lying if I said I would have been able to make "Polemics and obscenity" sound this good without my friend's contributions.

But most importantly: unlike the "Sonic degeneracy" sessions, recordings for "Polemics and obscenity" took place in a totally relaxed working environment, spread over an almost two-year timeframe (2022-2024, while "Sonic degeneracy" was finally getting released) with no self-imposed schedules nor any bullshit that got me overloaded and burnt out at the time of the first record. You can tell I was feeling more easy-going, relaxed and energetic just by hearing my vocal performance - much more incisive and confident this time around compared to past recording where my fatigue and exhaustion were apparent. Plus, this time around I could count on musicians with balls of steel, who were able to take the work seriously and respect their word - something that (without naming names) had not always been the case at the time of "Sonic degeneracy".

For the first time in Rotgod history, after resisting for many years, I gave in to direct input recording for guitars and bass - meaning I recorded them straight into my computer, using an amp simulator as distortion. I had always feared the sound would turn out too "plastic" and artificial, like many modern metal albums released on big labels (and even many smaller ones) - however, by fucking around a bit in a "non-orthodox" fashion (as I usually do), I realized I could get a guitar tone that did not only sound as raw as I needed it to be, in pure "80's underground" style (always using Schizo guitarist S.B. Reder's tone as main reference), but also much fuller and crisper than any of my older recordings done with my shitty old Line 6 amp, which always fell short of my expectations; to get a similar result by recording from a real high-quality amp cabinet would require such huge costs I knew I wouldn't be able to deal with - plus, direct input recording is much more "governable" and the sound doesn't change randomly between one session and the other (if you read the behind-the-scenes for "Jesus Christ pornostar", you'll know what I'm talking about). Having the guitar tone I had always dreamed of finally allowed me to give a better treatment to the bass as well - carving more space for it in the lower range - whilst the drums, thanks to the new microphones and a serious sound card, now possess the classic organic metal/punk feel from the 80s, which on "Sonic degeneracy" I could only get when my older equipment decided to behave well and not to turn the snare sound to shit (yeah, it's exactly that famous old "snare sounds like shit" meme everyone who makes music is well aware of).

I don't really know if "Polemics and obscenity" fits the typically bombastic rock-bio narrative of the "record that saved the musician's life", but one thing's for sure: I had taken way too much shit during those years, and I had to get it out of my system in order to start breathing again. A narrative I'd rather use, since I find it just as fascinating as the other, is the following: while I was working on "Sonic degeneracy", I found myself lost at some point, without knowing which way to go anymore; "Polemics and obscenity", together with my side-project The Ineffable, was a necessary step in order to find my way back home and start making music again the way I used to, with the same inspiration I once possessed, paving the way for "Raw is the law" and all the crazy side-projects I started in recent years. I find it telling that the timeframe during which I wrote these songs and the timeframe of my burnout tend to overlap - with "Total burnout" in particular being one of the very first songs I started working on (just before my late-2018 mental breakdown), and having finished it only years later almost like a bookend to this bleak, long ass time span (around early 2022, I was finally starting to feel a bit better), engraving within my lyrics all the exhaustion and isolation I had endured in the meantime. That doesn't mean nowadays I'm back to my pre-burnout state as if nothing happened: those years definitely left some permanent scars on me - most notably, a general sense of exhaustion and fatigue is always there with me, whilst the feelings of intolerance and disillusionment towards the world I expressed on "Polemics and obscenity" have only been emboldened in recent years, finding increasingly clearer, harder-to-mistake confirmations over time, which I can guarantee will translate into more extreme and spiteful music in the future. And this last sentence defines the key difference with the past: now I feel proactive, inspired, able to create and more self-aware than I once was; I know who I am, I'm more aware of my own nature, I know what I want and I can reclaim it for myself. But most importantly: now I think I have gained enough emotional intelligence (something the impulsive teenager who made "Sonic degeneracy" lacked quite a bit) to at least accept a small circle of good people in my life, who keep helping me resist, tolerate and carry on.

I still hesitate to treat "Polemics and obscenity" as my "sophomore album": both parts remain structured like typical EPs, with some sparse new material and a few cover songs all jumbled together. Nonetheless, I like to think that even in this scenario (similarly to the extended digital edition of "Sonic degeneracy") a fil rouge does in fact exist, connecting all the tracks together in a unified narrative - and for this reason "Polemics and obscenity", despite its more-than-troubled origins, is a record with "a soul" no less than "Sonic degeneracy" was. Phew, I'm finally done with the overly sentimental bullshit - just in time before I start quoting Pietro Pacciani's poems or something.

Articles

• The chronology of "Polemics and obscenity"

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