Lay Down Rotten

A German death metal band that originally came to be in 1999 as the solo project of vocalist Daniel Jakobi, Lay Down Rotten quickly expanded to a band within a year, and by November of 2000 had completed work on a four-track demo. Joined by a trio of musicians prior to the demo sessions, the group made a quick turnaround and was back in the studio in 2001 to put more down on tape. A series of successful shows in 2002 and word-of-mouth reaction from their demo releases served Lay Down Rotten well, and in 2004 the band released its first album, Paralyzed by Fear, on Remission Records. A German tour followed soon after, and then Lay Down Rotten opted to expand their muscle by adding a second vocalist, Jost Kleinert. More studio time and more album releases followed — Cold Constructed, Breeding Insanity — and before long the band found itself signing a deal with one of the genre's leading independents, Metal Blade. Their first work for the well-respected label, Reconquering the Pit, was released in 2007. The rest of that year was then spent hitting the festival circuit, playing such bucolic gigs as Party-San, Queens of Metal, and Ragnarock.