ROTTING CHRIST – Rituals

Rotting Christ – Rituals (2016, Season of Mist)

Legendary Greek outfit that is Rotting Christ has been one of the first Black metal band out of Scandinavia to get attention and reach a status of great with their demo Satanas Tedeum in 1989. This album marked some of the greatest Black metal played slow and with their own signature.

My first encounter with Rotting Christ was back when I bought Century Media’s sublabel Century Black’s Firestarter compilation back in 1998. The song was ‘’Coronation of the Serpent’’ taken from their album Thy Mighty Contract. Then previous to Rituals, my last time around Rotting Christ was the overrated Aealo back in 2010. I hated this album after the third time I listened to it and even today I just can’t stand one song of it. It is a divisive opinion but I keep my ground about it.

Getting to Rituals, another record in Rotting Christ’s already diverse discography that went from Black metal to Gothic metal and Dark metal, they are crafting a sound that is their own and that’s for sure. However, even if they have their own Greek metal sound, I found Rituals to be shooting in none sense and anywhere around it. The better notes on this album are the songs ‘’Elthe Kyrie’’ and ‘’The Four Horsemen’’. ‘’Elthe Kyrie’’ is a fast song that might end in the best Metal songs of the year.

But their music is highly based on chorus and sampling orchestrations that wants so much to be great and epic but that sounds empty and really clunky in its gait to get there.

In fact, a song alone like ‘’Coronation of the Serpent’’ or ‘’The Four Horsemen’’ might pass as an enjoyable moment but an entire album is too much Rotting Christ and Rituals is not as despicable as Aealo but still a weak offer in its structure and overall tenure between the songs and the editing of the album. Even at almost thirty years of activity, Rotting Christ seems to struggle to get their songs tight and concise. So think my perception of an entire album.

4.8