I'll be straight up with you: this is pretty gross. Before you listen, you'll need to put on your big boy (or girl) pants and put your child down, lest you accidentally launch them into space, sending them into their own cosmic journey much like the one you'll be on, but down here. Is that a weird thing to say? Probably. Is it an appropriate thing to say in relation to this album? Definitely. Oh, you don't trust me? Okay, fair enough - if you're reading this before listening to the self-titled Ethereal Rot thematic nightmare, you're in for a confronting ride. Moving on. If you grab the lyrics and follow it through this fictional hellscape, you'll end up with this same perspective: you're following a thematic journey of the incitation of humanity's demise (The Beckoning Contagion) and the subsequent obituary of humanity (Into the Naught), so you're bound to be exisentially whipped like the ontological casuals you are. Alright, on to the music. This is the first LP release from Ethereal Rot, and this is nothing if not an exclamation point to the blackened tech death metal scene. It might take you until the second track, "That Which Dwells", to acclimatise to the mix of the album, but at that point you're going to be as ready as you possibly could be anyway. Why thats worth mentioning is owing to what's beneath the mix: the dissonant and precisely crafted melodies, the percussion that guides it, the uncomfortably unintelligible vocals that shift and change, and the constantly oppressive atmosphere. "Why would anyone like that?" I hear leave your thin, chapped lips - and that's a fair question. It is becayse there is a richness and a vastness to the music that sits beneath the oppressive vanir, and if you're equipped for the journey, then this is a rewarding journey to embark on. This isn't for everyone, but if you enjoy a rich expression of existential oppression through precisely crafted technical death metal, or frowning a lot, this is definitely for you.