Rotting Christ - A Dead Poem (1997)Release ID: 2817
A Dead Poem bears little resemblance to black metal, but still contains some typically cool melodies. Decent but not essential.
It took me quite a long time to appreciate the work of these Greek veterans. Their first two albums (Thy Mighty Contract and Non Serviam) were certainly trying to do something different, but their mid paced melodies just didn’t hit the mark and the rather primitive black metal didn’t do much on its own either. They were the kind of albums where you could easily hear the potential, but the result was less than amazing. Triarchy of the Lost Lovers changed all that with a better production and some memorable melodies, so I was chomping at the bit to check out their next release to find out whether this improvement would continue. Prior to doing so, I noticed that the band had grown from a three piece (Sakis performing guitar and vocals, Jim on bass and Themis behind the kit) to a five piece (Kostas joins as a second guitarist and Panayotis comes in on keyboards). Jim had also been replaced by Andreas who would remain the bassist right through to modern times. I wasn’t all that concerned about all these personnel switches and additions and hoped that the resulting fuller sound would work in Rotting Christ’s favour.
As it turns out, all these changes didn’t completely have the effect I was hoping for. Instead of creating a bigger and better form of the Triarchy of the Lost Lovers album, Rotting Christ dropped most of the black metal sound they’d developed and moved into more gothic territory. The band had always performed mid paced music with a focus on melody, but now the drumming is plodding and simplistic, the riffs have absolutely no venom to them, and the overall mood is more romantic than haunting. It’s not at all surprising to find Fernando from Moonspell and Xy from Samael making guest appearances on A Dead Poem as the album sounds a little bit like a mixture of those two bands in some ways. Xy also had a lot to do with the production of the album and you can hear that in the almost sterile sound. I spent my first few listens shaking my head thinking that I’d spent so much time letting Rotting Christ get under my skin, to the point where I could call myself a fan, only for the band to alienate me straight away. But then something happened around the fourth listen. I started to really enjoy it!
Despite the change in surroundings, the nice Rotting Christ melodies are still here to be enjoyed. Sorrowful Farewell, Among Two Storms, As if by Magic and Semigod are all pretty successful gothic metal tracks that just take a little bit of time to sink in. The critical thing for me was that I came in with incorrect expectations, but once I got past the initial confusion, A Dead Poem turned out to be quite a decent little album. Let’s get one thing straight though! If you ignore the raspy vocals, there is almost nothing representing black metal on this album. Most of the riffs could be straight out of any standard gothic rock entity and the drumming remains passive throughout. In fact, just as with country mates Septic Flesh, the band’s rather blasphemous moniker seems just a little bit silly at this stage of their career. At least they were going by their real names by now instead of immature titles like Necromayhem, Necrosauron and Mutilator. Anyway, as much as I can now find some enjoyment on A Dead Poem, it just doesn’t move me the way Triarchy of the Lost Lovers does. It’s a harmless enough and reasonably effective album, but not essential in any way.
Coming on the heels of "Trirarchy Of The Lost Lovers", an accomplished, if under-produced, melodic black metal milestone, "A Dead Poem" was a curious leap for Rotting Christ. While I'm unsure of what pressures were put on the band by their label, the record was a radical departure for the band and came close to an outright aping of two of Century Media's most successful releases of the time: "Down" by Sentenced and "Irreligious" by Moonspell. If I were to take the short road, a halfway point between those records would not be an inaccurate review of this album. It features the same slightly dry Siggi Bem Woodhouse Studios sound, was produced by Xy (Samael's "Passage" also being a big success for Century Media at that time), and the most accessible track, "Among Two Storms", features a prominent guest vocal performance form Moonspell's Fernando Ribiero.
The opener "Sorrowfull Farewell" is a solid rocker, borrowing heavily from the Sentenced-perfected method of adding a Euro-gothic feel to what is musically a pretty traditional romp through some Y&T style 80s metal, topped with Sakis' black metal snarl. The commercial potential of the record really peaks with the second track, "Among Two Storms", which introduces some gothic pomp and melody to the vocals with Fernando's contribution to the chorus, but also makes it sound a little too close to something off a Moonspell record. The title track then slows things down and takes a darker, dissonant turn, more in the vein of early Novombre and Katatonia, but still sounding uniquely Greek. These three tracks really set the template for the remainder of the record, without too many further surprises. Other highlight's include "Full Colour Is The Night" and the ponderous "Semigod"
It would be hard to argue against the assertion that this album was a blatant dig in the same market furrow that Century Media had been so successfully ploughing for their other bands, were it not for the fact that Rotting Christ have, before and since, made unpredictable creative leaps between albums on a regular basis; sometimes successfully and sometimes less so, but only occasionally coinciding with trends. That being the case, I'm willing to judge this album on it's own merits: it's an enjoyable listen and a solid example of some of the more commercially viable post-black metal of the late 1990s.
