Extreme metal is silly. You've got grown ups dressed like badgers, singing about a midnight rendezvous with Satan, or crawling through the Arctic wasteland, or shoving knives into orifices that knives should not be shoved into. But, as Morbid Angel's 'Illud Divinum Insanus' so painfully proved in 2011, your arse can get a bit stuck if you try and wiggle out of the death metal rabbit hole you’ve burrowed for yourself.
Rotting Christ have a bit more tact than that. A bit more class. The brothers Tolis – Themis behind the drumkit and Sakis taking on guitars and vocals – are OG as fuck and next year will be their 30th anniversary as a band. Over the years, the Greek black metallers have morphed from a savage, blastbeat-reliant behemoth of grind and death to an otherworldly, folkloric force. ‘Κατά τον δαίμονα εαυτού’ was released in 2013 and it was the best thing Rotting Christ ever carved their name into. And ‘Rituals’, their 13th foray into full-length territory, is now upon us.
As the title suggests, this is something of a religious experience. It’s mainly mid-tempo black metal loaded with organic, choir-like chants. The production job is immaculate but never synthetic. They’re going for anthems here. Big, bulging anthems.
An ominous bell tolls through The Four Horsemen while Apage Satana’s verses were seemingly stolen from Crash Bandicoot’s Aku Aku. Paradise Lost’s Nick Holmes pops up during For A Voice Like Thunder, spouting evil rhetoric: “When souls are torn to everlasting fire.” So far, so ridiculous.
But Rotting Christ covered a lot of this ground last time out. Themis’s drums still punch the listener’s brain onto the pavement every now and again, with In Nomine Dei Nostri and Elthe Kyrie both thrashing like Gyarados in a frying pan, and you’ve still got the influences from outside extreme metal, with Sakis’s guitar melodies taking more than a few lessons from the schools of Mercyful Fate and Iron Maiden. And, of course, Komx Om Pax features what has now become a Rotting Christ trope, where Sakis riffs all on his lonesome. The orchestral bit builds, then the drums kick in with the riff continuing. An imaginary wall of death collides before your eyes.
As a result, ‘Rituals’ is a solid record but there’s just not enough variation. The mid-tempo stuff is good but it’s never going to be Grandis Spiritus Diavolos. The fast stuff is still feral but they’ve done it a million times before. Hardcore devotees may worship this album but, even for fans of Rotting Christ’s hypnotic latter-day work, 50 minutes of it a bit of a slog. For the uninitiated, the curious and the nitpicky, it’s more like an endurance test. Whichever camp you fall into, listening to ‘Rituals’ is like being asked to sprint up Mount Everest with a landmine between your cheeks.
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