ROTTING CHRIST - Sanctus Diavolos
October 15, 2004, 20 years ago
(Century Media)
A deceptively simple blastbeat quickly turns into the richest blast melody you've ever heard. Then uneasy, creepy, creaking sound effects introduce themselves and fill the background. And just like that, in under four minutes, you realize that Greece's black artisans are likely to uphold, over the remaining maelstrom, the exquisite high standards for which they've become revered. A cathedral of pain arrives track two, but it is the absolutely poisoned riff and production of 'Athanati Este', which makes it bloody metal masterpiece of the year so far even though literally, much of it is Greek to me. The rest of the album is carnal, carnivorous, solemnly orchestral (although to be more accurate, chanted, enchanted and choir-damned), confessionally and/or conspiratorially whispered, monotonously and ritualistically recited, and so pitch-black dark (see "ballad" 'Sanctimonious') that you might need night goggles, a silver bullet and a bible in your breast pocket and a bottle of gin at the ready, to get through it. Down to a three-piece, Rotting Christ still manage to sound like a phalanxed swarm of heavy metal locusts (see the second Exorcist movie), a buzzing mass at mass, piercing angelic female voices howling periodically above the humid, gauzy, inverted (cross) recording values chosen by Sakis and his studious, bedeviled trinity.
