ROTTING CHRIST - The Heretics review

ROTTING CHRIST - The Heretics

Season of Mist




I'm one of those hold outs waiting for ROTTING CHRIST to put out an actual black metal album, again. I know, fuck me running, right? Hey look I give em props as far as their history goes. Their first three albums from the 90's are essential black metal. They put Greece on the blackened map as far as the genre goes. But then their A Dead Poem full length came out in 1997 and they moved onto a more gothic, or if you will, a more epic metal sound as their career moved forward.


Now with that said I have a few of their epic era albums. They have some decent moments as far as that style of metal goes. So listening to this new one is not much of a shock. It's more of what we've all heard from this band over the past decade or longer. The Heretics is essentially a concept album with plenty of spoken word quotations from famous figures in history interspersed within the music. Once again the band's sound on here is epic and grandiose. It's an album which must be looked upon as a whole piece than a collection of songs. 

Since this is their thirteenth full length and more than a few years in the making it seems fit that the band would go all out to make a profound statement. For those of you not up on your literary knowledge then this will be an education or an exercise in boredom. Frankly if you are into metal, in my not so humble opinion, you should be well versed into the historical subject matter of freedom to speak out and challenged those who wish to control your mind. That's the concept of Heritics in a nutshell put to some melodic industrial style trudging riffs, choir style vocals along with Sakis Tolis' caustic lead vocals. 

The Heretics is another example of metal music being an element to educate. I'll give the band that gold star. On the other hand musically this is a boring effort overall. There are very few highlights to reference other than a clean guitar solo the sears on one track or the inclusion of folk elements and the cover artwork that looks like something GRAND BELIAL'S KEY should have used years ago. Like most of their releases which have come out over the past decade. I won't be returning to this.

http://www.season-of-mist.com/
https://rottingchrist.bandcamp.com/album/the-heretics
https://www.facebook.com/Rotting-Christ-290468585669/

MIZANTROPIA - Oblivion review

MIZANTROPIA  -  Oblivion

Metal Scrap Records


Years ago, back before I semi retired from the blog. I used to get at least one release from some Gothic Metal band per month. Yeah ya give a NIGHTWISH CD a good review and it opens the fuckin floodgates. Most of the bands were from Europe with a few exceptions. I mean gothic metal from places like Argentina and South Africa, who would've guested? All of these bands had common threads aka: exceptional musicianship, plenty of keyboards and of course a lovely female singer either wrapped in a ball gown or strapped into a corset with her business hanging out. I named it "Prom Dress Metal".

So with all of that said I don't want to get into the habit of reviewing this stuff anymore. But since this label was nice enough to send SFM666 a bevy of cool stuff to review I'll let this one pass. Just as long as I don't start getting invites to all gothic metal band fests in Bulgaria again. So here we have MIZANTROPIA from the Ukraine who actually break the mold of your typical gothic metal act. Musically it's still the same old progressive melodic death metal with the keyboards layered in the back. But their female vocalist sings in the clean as well as death metal growled vocal style. So that is a twist.

The key here is that she's actually singing in that voice as opposed to a lot of melodic death metal bands with female singers who just grunt rand scream. Typically in the gothic metal genre the woman will sing the clean passages and one of the male band members will do the harsh death vocals. So to me this puts their ranking higher than typical prom dress metal. Plus I checked out one of their videos and the singer is wearing a corset. Yeah I'm an older gentleman now but I appreciate beauty as well as talent. I think if you are into this genre of metal, oh and there are a lot in Europe, then MIZANTROPIA is a band you should be checking out especially if you can appreciate the edge they add to their sound.

 Rating: 4/5


http://metalscraprecords.com/ 

https://www.facebook.com/Mizantropia-130594892316/