Woe, it must be Death Metal week over at the RMR Review Desk. First, these guys graced our roster with their presence, and now, a decision has been made to descend further down into the abyss. The one filled with subdued, putridly liquid riffs and unintelligible growls with not a shred of any clear voice in sight. Realms of the metal underbelly that are buried deeper than most. Extremes where the boundaries between Black and Death Metal blur.
Rigor Sardonicous have been around since 1988. And for that, they should get on our n00b list of old, established bands with a track record of being shapers of metal. But for the life of us, we’ve never heard of them. Their 2023 album Praeparet Bellum must have sailed straight past us. And the other one that aired 11 years prior never registered. So, here’s to yet another band with a spotty discography fraught with long breaks and a hiatus or two. Open the door, gatekeeper, the RMR crew needs to descend these slimy stairs.
Diatriba Deorum truly fits the stereotype. The band made their tune roll as slowly and heavily as they possibly could. There is nothing cheerful to hear here. A monstrous, sludgy avalanche of downturned doom and despair will follow you around throughout the somewhat lengthy tracklist. With compressors firing on all pistons, buzzing riffs with no solo in direct sight, all you have left is to sink into its sumpy embrace. And on top of the mix, the liquid-sounding, gravelly growls relentlessly try to wear you down. The lyrics sheet tells us of weighty thoughts and heavy themes. But the spoken word will just rashly rasp straight by your earphone with no impact. The rancid, sludgy growls could as well be Martian. There is nothing there to understand. At all.
The RMR crew gave Diatriba Deorum about ten listens. The musical prowess of both band members has never been in question. Ideation, arrangement, and the handling of the instruments are all top-notch. Boy, even the terrible drum machine got a few brownie points over here.
But the monolithic nature of the piece always pulled us back from issuing higher ratings. An avalanche of grime, a mucky type of metal slop engulfed us at every second of the record with monochrome mulishness. True, the band tried to break this up with some melodic samples and the odd bell ringing here and there. But this is against the inherent rulez the record struck out for itself. The uniform flow of woe and tribulation forever feels like a sticky lava flow from a supervolcano somewhere on a forlorn island. And said uniformity flows into repetitiveness that makes it difficult to discern on what track the listener actually is.
In the end, Diatriba Deorum was a difficult listen at best. It isn’t easy to get into the piece and stay focused at the same time. In other words, after about 10 minutes or so of airtime, our mutual brains started to wander. And that turned this record into some terrible background music. Never a good idea when a record is playing that should pull you along. Both Glenn Hampton and Joseph Fogarazzo are fine musicians, and we said this before. But none of the tracks really resonated with us. And how should that be possible at that level of energy? Apart from Commandment perhaps that, helped by the pretty sturdy video on display, managed to hold our gaze and attention for longer than usual.
Rigor Sardonicous has been in operation for many a decade, and their ways are set. Somebody opined that sometimes there is a reason why a band cannot break into the metal multiverse’s finicky consciousness. And here it is because they’re trying the same raw and abrasive soundbites all over again that only resonate with few.
Despite being called cvlt by some.
Record Rating: 4/10 | Label: Meuse Music | Web: Official Band Site
Release Date: 31 July 2026