Copenhagen hardcore band Rot Away have a new song that gets straight to the point. “Keep Steppin” has the kind of simple, physical drive guitarist Christian and drummer Andy enjoy playing, with a breakdown inspired by Turnstile and Trapped Under Ice saved for the closing stretch.
It came together during a spring evening in their rehearsal room, and now we’re giving the track’s new video its advance premiere on IDIOTEQ, a day before the official single release.
There’s a fair bit behind that simplicity. “Keep Steppin” comes from “True Sorrow“, Rot Away’s third album, which finds the Danish band moving between their familiar hardcore sound and a heavier metalcore direction. Christian has also been unusually candid about the record that came before it. He thinks parts of 2023’s “Heavy Weight” sound like a band trying too hard to resemble somebody else.
“With True Sorrow, I feel like we made a Rot Away album again.”
That feeling comes through in the way “Keep Steppin” was put together. Most of the new album was written at Christian’s home, but this song started with him and Andy sitting down together in their practice space on the outskirts of Copenhagen. Christian had a small riff in mind. They worked on it through the evening, keeping things deliberately uncomplicated and concentrating on making something they would enjoy playing.
The result has a fairly traditional verse-and-chorus structure, with the heavier ending taking over after the main body of the song. They didn’t initially have everything worked out, and Christian admits that the final section was added because they found the track a little dull without it.
“The breakdown/outro was something we felt like we needed to include in the song, since otherwise it would honestly have been a boring song hahah.. With obvious inspiration from the likes of Turnstile and Trapped Under Ice, the outro really made us fall in love with the song at the end of it all.”
Writing together in the rehearsal room was a welcome change. These days, it’s easy for musicians to build songs at home, send files around and arrive at practice with arrangements already worked out. Christian had done much of the writing for “True Sorrow” that way. This time, two members sat down with a riff and played until they had a song.
“All in all it was refreshing to write a song “au natural” in a time where home writting/recording is such a big thing.”
Jonathan’s vocals came together on an equally loose schedule. He wrote the lyrics the day before the recording session, something Christian says happens fairly regularly with their singer. The words are about keeping yourself going through whatever you’re dealing with, from personal problems to difficulties coming from outside. Christian hears a positive feeling in the song, and Jonathan’s final shout of “KEEP STEPPIN'” is where he wanted that energy to come out.
There’s a nice bit of consistency in how the song was made. The instrumental came from Christian and Andy enjoying themselves in a room together; Jonathan followed his usual instinct of writing close to the recording deadline. They ended up with a direct hardcore track about carrying on when things get difficult.
The accompanying video was edited by Dylan Gould, a Canadian friend of Christian’s who plays bass in Crosshair and has also worked on social media content for Signs of the Swarm. Rot Away’s new promotional photographs, taken in 2026, are credited to Rasmus Hasle.
Rot Away have been around long enough to know how awkward making a second album can get. Their debut, “Nothing Is Good”, arrived in 2021, followed by “Heavy Weight” two years later. By that point the band were making progress, playing more shows and getting better at everything involved in running Rot Away. They’ve shared stages with Cabal, END, Parkway Drive and Neckbreakker, and their name has become familiar in Danish hardcore.
Christian still finds “Heavy Weight” difficult to revisit. “HW was in many ways the difficult second album, even though we made a lot of progress as a band and brand.”
His criticism gets sharper when he talks about the actual writing. “But it was difficult and listening back, I hear a lot places where we somehow tried to be like other bands – and failed.”
For “True Sorrow“, the group gave themselves more room to follow different ideas. September’s first single, “Seethrough”, came out on 11 September through Over The Under Records and pushed further into metalcore, a direction the band themselves had been keen to try. “Keep Steppin” heads back towards the hardcore they started with.
Christian believes that on “Heavy Weight” they would have been too cautious to put those different sides of Rot Away together on the same record. This time they were happy to let one song lean towards modern metalcore and the next follow a more straightforward hardcore idea.
The title track has its own more developed guitar arrangement, including a solo, and opens an album that runs through nine songs. “Keep Steppin” appears midway through, while “Seethrough” arrives towards the end. There is a connection to another corner of Copenhagen hardcore on the latter track: the album’s vinyl artwork credits “SEETHROUGH FEAT. SYL”.
Rot Away and SYL already have some history together. Back in 2024, Jonathan Albrechtsen appeared on SYL’s song “igen”, from their EP “afmagt”. The bands have also shared stages, and the new collaboration puts that connection onto a Rot Away album.
Over The Under Records became part of the band’s plans before the “True Sorrow” campaign began. Working with the Copenhagen-based independent label had been something Rot Away wanted for a long time. The partnership was announced in August, with OTU taking on their forthcoming releases. It gives the band a new label home for the third album, including its planned vinyl edition.
Christian’s comments about “Heavy Weight” also bring up a phrase Rot Away have been using for years: “Ghost City Hardcore”. It comes from “Ghost City”, one of the singles on that album, where Jonathan sings “Copenhagen Ghost City”. The song dealt with anonymity and alienation in Copenhagen, and the band liked that particular line enough to start using it to describe themselves.
Christian thinks the ghosts may have referred to people Jonathan used to know, although he’s careful about his recollection. The phrase stuck around anyway, appearing in the band’s own identity and promotion. It’s a reference to how Jonathan saw Copenhagen and to a song that became closely associated with Rot Away. “Ghost City Hardcore” is the band’s own name for what they do, born out of the lyrics to “Ghost City”.
Copenhagen’s winters have a fairly direct effect on the writing, too. Christian finds the cold, grey months a good reason to stay indoors with a guitar and work on heavier riffs. There’s something amusing about the fact that all three Rot Away albums have then been recorded during periods of intense summer heat.
“We are in some ways extremly unlycky, when we record albums in Rot Away. Nothing is good was reacorded during a blistering summer heat, so was Heavy Weight and latest was True Sorrow.”
He reckons the winter weather has something to do with why they end up writing when they do. “It can get extremly dull, gray and cold up here during the winter, so it seems like a fitting time to pick up a guitar and start writing fight riffs hahah.”
There’s plenty of rough visual material surrounding “True Sorrow” as well. The cover shows a grotesquely distorted, open-mouthed figure, with exposed teeth and a twisted face worked into dark, scratched textures. The proposed vinyl jacket carries that image across the front, with the song titles on the reverse. Elsewhere in the artwork package are more playful, graffiti-style Rot Away designs, a slightly different look from the album cover’s grim figure.
One of the accompanying printed designs features a skull pierced by a blade beneath a short Danish line attributed to Peter Hove: “DU GØR HVAD DU GØR, DER SKER HVAD DER SKER!” It sits among the various artwork and sticker pieces prepared around the band’s releases.
Christian has another little habit that goes back through Rot Away’s catalogue. He’s a huge Metallica fan and has always wanted to sneak a reference to the band into every release they make. There’s one on “True Sorrow” too, and he reckons it’s fairly obvious. He specifically wanted to leave its location undisclosed so listeners could work it out themselves.
There’s nothing especially complicated about his hopes for the finished album. He wants Rot Away to write the music they actually enjoy hearing and playing, with production that suits the band they’ve become. After his reservations about “Heavy Weight”, he’s clearly happier with the decisions they’ve made this time.
“TS is our most ambitious record to date, and i really feel it showcases the kind of music we’ve always wanted to listen to and play live.”
“Keep Steppin” is a damn good example of that approach. Christian and Andy started with one riff, spent a spring evening playing together and ended up with a song whose breakdown became the part they liked most. Jonathan gave it the words just before recording. There’s no elaborate origin story hiding behind it, and Christian seems quite happy about that.
“Keep Steppin” premieres through IDIOTEQ on 12 November 2026, ahead of its official release on 13 November. Rot Away’s third album, “True Sorrow”, follows on 5 February 2027 through Over The Under Records. The earlier single “Seethrough” is available on YouTube, with previous Rot Away releases on Bandcamp and updates through the band’s official links.
Rot Away is: Jonathan Albrechtsen – Vocals. Christian Mattesen – Guitar, Vocals. Andreas “Andy” Albrechtsen – Drums, Vocals Ole Schwartz – Bass, Vocals. Martin “o’Dollar” Olsen – Guitar, Vocals.
P.S. See my recent show review from Copenhagen. It’s not hardcore, but it might soothe your soul.
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