Rotting Christ - Thy Mighty Contract (1993)^{Release ID: 2814}

Enjoyable early melodic black metal that's just occasionally a bit flat.

This is really the earliest officially melodic black metal album I can come up with. Of course, Dissection released The Somberlain during the same year, but that album is really a very different beast to behold. While Dissection kick started the rather intense Swedish melodic black metal style (along with Marduk) that would influence stacks of bands such as Naglfar and Dark Funeral, Rotting Christ were doing something quite unique. There are no particularly shredding riffs here or screaming vocals. It probably has more in common with the simplicity of early Samael, but with a fair amount of melody added to the mix.

The drumming is completely nontechnical, the vocals are gruff and at times seemingly emotionless, and the guitars switch from chugging rhythms to soaring melodies throughout. They even throw in smatterings of keyboard to add to the already substantial atmosphere. But I have to say at some points things get just a little characterless and mundane. While Transform All Suffering Into Plagues and Exiled Archangels are really enjoyable tracks filled with both darkness and beauty, others such as Fgmenth, the Gift and Dive the Deepest Abyss don't reach such heights, just plodding along without doing anything particularly of note. All up I'd say Thy Mighty Contract is a fine first attempt by Rotting Christ and a decent enough listen every now and then, but they'd certainly release better albums in years to come though.

Greek black metal stalwarts Rotting Christ first came to my attention in the early 1990's via their 1991 "Passage to Arcturo" E.P. &, shortly afterwards, their 1993 debut album "Thy Mighty Contract" & 1989 demo tape "Satanas Tedeum". I have to admit that my initial experiences with Rotting Christ didn't quite live up to the hype though if I'm being honest & I'd have to wait until I bought their excellent 1994 sophomore album "Non serviam" on CD the following year to be fully convinced. But all of the recent discussion in the Metal Academy forums about the most "important" black metal releases in history has seen my interest being revivied which has resulted in me finally giving "Thy Mighty Contract" another chance to impress me all these years later.

To start the conversation, I'm gonna make a couple of big, bold statements. The first one is that, despite what you may read elsewhere, Rotting Christ's debut album isn't a melodic black metal record. It may often be touted as the very FIRST melodic black metal release but there is really very little to link it to what that niche subgenre would shortly become. You won't find any complex tapestries of guitar harmonies here with the melodic component being reserved for some fairly restrained single-guitar themes that have a lot more to do with Paradise Lost than they do with Dissection. In fact, there's not actually all that much material that I'd describe as being stereotypical black metal included at all really. There's just as much death metal, thrash metal, doom metal & heavy metal here in my opinion & that sees the album being much more closely aligned with the First Wave of Black Metal than it is with the notorious Norwegian Second Wave. The riffs remind me very much of Swiss black metallers Samael in that they're simply constructed with the tempo kept predominantly in the mid-range & a heavy emphasis being placed on palm-muted, down-picked chugging. The vocals aren't the most stereotypical you'll find in the black metal space either, sitting just as comfortably in the death metal space as they do the black metal one. Ultimately, I'd suggest that it's the band's clear allegiances to the occult that are the primary factors in early Rotting Christ's affiliation with metal's most evil genre, along with the atmospheres they're able to create through the occasional use of keyboards.

The tracklisting is a touch inconsistent with a couple of flat numbers included amongst the eight songs on offer. Neither of "Fgmenth, Thy Gift" or "His Sleeping Majesty" do much for me at all but these blemishes are made a little more impactful by the lack of genuine highlight tracks with only closer "The Fourth Knight of Revelation" delivering a standout performance. The rest of the material is all reasonably enjoyable but it rarely achieves anything like the peaks you'd generally expect from a seminal extreme metal recording & I feel that Rotting Christ were still very much a work in progress. "Thy Mighty Contract" certainly isn't a bad record & I feel that I've been overly critical of it in the past but I simply can't see it being all that important in the annals of black metal history, particularly given that it's borderline in its alignment to the genre to begin with.

For fans of Varathron, Thou Art Lord & Samael.

That band is called Rotting Christ. The album cover is a goat with a pentagram and then a depiction of 3 crucified figures. What could possibly be the subject matter of this?

Yup it's "cold beet", "small town", "dirt road" black metal again. This time the relentless blast beats have melody... sort of... I mean I guess. This type of thing really does only make sense to me through the lense of a pre-teen edgelord. If I think about being that age and wanting to piss off authority figures then I somewhat see the appeal of this, but all of that appeal is in the album art. Lyrically it appeals to the lowest common denominator (demonator?) of black metal fandom, and sonically it's half baked. Put it on your wall if you must, but keep it away from your turn table. 

The Jack Of All Black Metal

Rotting Christ’s debut seems to put them in a strange, in-between spot compared to the rest of the early 1990’s Black Metal landscape. They aren’t as tremolo focused or lo-fi as Darkthrone, nor as riff focused as Samael, nor as chaotic or evil as Mayhem, nor as thematic as Satyricon, so where does that leave them? For me, Thy Mighty Contract tries its best to pull a lot of different Metal influences into a cohesive but varied package, but fails to be very exciting at the end of the day. The album is filled with a smorgasbord of different tones and styles, ranging from classic blast beat tremolo, to mid-tempo Heavy Metal style riffing, to attempts at symphonic elements during tracks like “Dive the Deepest Abyss”, but I can’t say that Rotting Christ mastered any of these yet.

Given that they play so many different kinds of riffs throughout the album, it’s slightly unfortunate that I think Rotting Christ is at their weakest when they’re playing straight up Black Metal. The tremolo sections in “Transform All Suffering into Plagues” and “Coronation of the Serpent” are devoid of any sort of drum fills or flourishes, making them way too repetitive and downright uninteresting for the most part. “Exiled Archangels” does a better job with its more interesting melody and interesting layering of the guitars, but I’m still just waiting for these sections to be over and done with as I make my way through the album. Rotting Christ shines a bit brighter with their mid-tempo Black Metal riffage, with tracks like the aforementioned “Exiled Archangels” and “Dive the Deepest Abyss” becoming much better once they transition out of the tremolo and into the chug portions. While the riffing is good it’s not exactly stellar either, coming up short in comparison to its peers and even some of its contemporaries like Bathory’s mid-tempo tracks. The vocals are also pretty middle-of-the-road for me as well, with vocalist Necromayhem showing he has a decently varied range when it comes to his Black Metal shrieks, but he rarely steals the show.

Thy Mighty Contract lacks some overall aggression and presence and attempts to make up for it with an evil, occult atmosphere with some of the synth work, but ends up sounding fairly half-baked overall. Even though I’ve been pretty harsh on this album, I think it comes down to having the knowledge that other Black Metal albums I really enjoy simply execute all the parts of Rotting Christ’s style in better ways than what they showcase on this album. For someone who is looking to figure out their niche or taste in Black Metal I think Thy Mighty Contract would be a great recommendation, since it does a decent job at covering a lot of the aspects that other Black Metal bands specialize in. While their tremolo riffs drag a bit, their mid-tempo riffs aren’t exactly the hardest hitting ones I’ve ever heard, and their attempts at creating an occult atmosphere are hit or miss, there are still some great moments and transitions hidden in a few tracks like “His Sleeping Majesty”, “Exiled Archangels”, and “The Fourth Knight Of Revelation”. While I don’t think it aged as well or in the same ways as some of the other heavy hitting classics, it’s still a varied and inoffensive debut from yet another well known mid-1990’s Black Metal band.