Deteriorot | Awakening | Xtreem Music

 

Release Date: October 21^st 2025

Format: CD, 12" LP, Cassette, Digital

Genre: Death Metal

Country: USA

Deteriorot were born in the swamps of the New York/New Jersey death metal underground at the turn of the ‘90s, first under the name Mortuary, then under the banner that has stayed with them for over three decades. With a career marked by long gaps between albums but always carrying a reputation for unwavering devotion to the old death metal spirit, the band has stood like a tombstone in shifting sands. Led by Paul Zavaleta, they have preserved their identity through the years with sporadic but crushing releases. “Awakening” is their fourth full-length, and it proves again that Deteriorot is a band concerned only with carving their music deep into granite.

The album runs just under 37 minutes, structured in a way that plays like a ritual rising and sinking back into the grave. The short opener “Awakening” is an ominous prelude that quickly gives way to the full-blown assault of “The Flame” and “In Battle To Survive”. The riffs here are massive, with drums that shift from rolling blasts to martial pounding, giving the tracks an atmosphere of ancient warfare. “Horrors In An Everlasting Nightmare” and “A Ghost In The Mirror” bring a darker, crawling character, like shadows moving inside a ruined cathedral.

Midway, “Deliver Us From Fiction” and “Haunting Images From A Past Life” hammer down with direct, infectious riffing, while “Programmed By Fear” unleashes pure hostility. “Winter Moon” is one of the most striking tracks, filled with icy melodies and ending in a tortured solo that pierces through the murk. “In Silence” is monumental, stretching out the atmosphere into something almost ceremonial, while “The Spirit” brings back the violence before the brief outro “To Sleep” returns the album to the crypt it emerged from.

The sound of “Awakening” is thick and unrelenting, the kind of production that shakes walls without losing the sinister details in the guitar work. The artwork, the pacing, the atmosphere, everything works together like a vision of death metal that has no need to modernize or adapt. It is pure, direct, and steeped in the tradition of bands such as Bolt Thrower, Immolation, and Autopsy.

Deteriorot has delivered an album that is crushing in its simplicity, terrifying in its atmosphere, and convincing in its execution. It stands as another chapter in the band’s grim legacy, one that honors the past while still sounding alive and venomous in the present. This is an album that belongs in the collections of anyone devoted to death metal’s darker side. It is a reminder that some things never decay, they just keep crawling back from the grave.

Score: 7.5

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