Thirty years of creating extreme music, Wisconsin’s death metal juggernauts Jungle Rot have made a huge name and established themselves in the community making solid records throughout the career they’ve been as a band. I first got into Jungle Rot around 2009 with the album What Horrors Await and after giving the album multiple listens not only I was extremely impressed and pleased by their soundscapes, I also became a fan of the music and instantly liked everything they’ve put out. It’s been well over 4 years since 2018’s self titled was released and while that album was met with a positive response, this is also the first record to not be through Victory Records but instead, the band is now signed with Unique Leader Records.
If you know Jungle Rot and their music, they basically play a very old school driven, raw sounding style of death metal that’s in the veins of Bolt Thrower, Obituary, Hail Of Bullets, Benediction and Broken Hope with their lyrical content consists of corruption, world wars, death and murders in which this case these themes for the death metal scene is very well common in this day and age. Musically, this record continues where the self titled was left off and everything aside from the amazing craftsmanship and compositions, I truly feel Jungle Rot took their soundscapes and went above and beyond like a pummeling steamroller instantly chasing you until it starts to degrade.
The chunkier like guitar tones, textures sounding polished as ever before and drumming giving that stomping groove style arrangements as usual, this band fired all cylinders to make these songs have high velocity and quality to make these wonderfully crafted signatures and minimal arsenals giving every instrument a riff-writing presentation to make this album the most passionate and audible release the band has done to date. Even songs like Vengeance & Bloodlust, Asymmetric Warfare, Population Suicide and Death Squad sound like traditional Jungle Rot releases due to its pure rawness, unique vocal stylings and instant recognizable brain wrenching pieces of death metal that fans of Jungle Rot will be in for a nice delicious treat that is catchy, groovy and energetic. A Call To Arms is Jungle Rot’s matured and progressive driven records in a very long-time.
Overall Score: 8.5/10
Review by Jake Butler
