Singled Out: Red Rot's Near Disaster

Keavin Wiggins | 08-25-2022

Promo photo

Italian extreme metal band Red Rot released their new album "Mal de Vivre" this week and to celebrate we asked Davide Tiso (formerly of Ephel Duath) to tell us about the song "Near Disaster". Here is the story:

"Near Disaster" is a song that shows the more progressive side of Red Rot. This is a band rooted in Death Metal, born to express urgency and intensity, doing a complete 180 from what our previous experimental band Ephel Duath was about. The song I present today, "Near Disaster", has a more involved approach of most songs in our debut "Mal de Vivre", featuring oblique thrash riffing ala Voivod, and a progressive metal kind of vibe.

Writing this song I realized that the last time I approached a 100% thrash metal riff was '96/'97. For most of my career that guitar playing style was something I didn't approached at all because it never fit the material I was dealing with. Red Rot gave me the chance to look back to this old influence of mine and it was such an excitement to get back at it. It was like relearning a language I forgot.

"Near Disaster" combines clean and scream singing and represents the third main influence in the band's debut: old school thrash metal, that together with early '90 Death Metal and Death Doom (think about early Katatonia/Paradise Lost), create our main sound.

The song was placed in the tracklist to function as kind of a breather for the listener, alternating the more punishing tracks that show off our aggressive side.

The whole lyrical concept of Red Rot is mental illness, paranoia and mind distortions. "Near Disaster" deals with sixth sense for negative outcomes.
Catastrophizing is a cognitive distortion, a habit of negative exaggeration, the idea of finding some kind of comfort always assuming/predicting the worse case scenario.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more about the album here