Rotting Christ interview by Lefteris Tsoureas

[Prokomenos]

One of the last remaining acts of the first-generation black metal bands has returned with its tenth full-length release. Since their last effort, many things have changed in the ROTTING CHRIST camp: a new label, a new studio, a new website, and a new guitarist, all of which were discussed in our conversation with a hard-pressed-for-time, Sakis ´Necromayhem´ Tolis.


"There was a two-and-a-half year delay in our discography because of our choice to do a lot of touring for "Sanctus Diavolos". Concerts around the world made me unable to compose new material for a new album. Also, there was a year where we deliberated on what the face of the new album would be! The feedback from our previous album and through the touring in many countries around the world has encouraged us to positively achieve even better feedback with our next album."

Also, the new guitarist joined the band and gave a fresh air to their live performances!

"George toured with us during the last two years and really fits in with the band more in character and personality and not just as a musician! Of course he is a great guitar player and we are really glad to have him because we have tried some guitar players before him, and the others could not cope with being full members of ROTTING CHRIST as Costas was in the past."

Worldwide, "Theogonia" is acclaimed as the return to their roots and moreover to what is more close to the core of the band...

"I am really pleased that the feedback to this album as been more positive than I expected. I cannot expect a better feedback in the future. The next two to three months will prove how well the press and the audience will receive the album! But up until now, the response has surpassed our hopes and I really liked the identification many people have to our music... a Mediterranean feeling gave it a Greek trademark, which is something I was shooting for. I really wanted to infuse our music with these elements by using ancient Greek in our lyrics and certain traditional instruments."

Every song is a piece in the puzzle of the concept based on the poem by Hesiodos. Every attempt to piece apart the album song by song results in the loss of the album as a whole.

"I never wanted to present each of the songs individually on this album, mainly because each song incorporates a piece of the concept which I was trying to visualize what the album was to represent."

Their efforts from "Khronos" to "Sanctus Diavolos" were an attempt to redefine their sound to resemble their early years, something that they had totally lost during their more dark/atmospheric albums in the late 90´s, "A Dead Poem" and "Sleep Of The Angels". In addition, their efforts had a lack of creativity on riffs and melodies which made their music more easily forgotten since they contained similar elements. On the new album, melodies come to the front and lead every song in much the same way as they did on "Thy Mighty Contract" 14 ago, a fact emphasised by its positive acceptance of both fans and press!

"I would say that whoever listened to our most recent stuff can agree with this opinion. Most listeners just listen to the music and go on to the next release, but opinions such as this show that there are those who really listen carefully to our music and I am really glad about that! Our melodies are more strong and straightforward, reminding us of our earlier material up until our most melodic album, "Triarchy Of The Lost Lovers".

The sound of the album is rawer and closer to what the band is all about... supplemented with samples from traditional Greek music, choirs and even a musulman, the album reveals guitar-oriented work which has nothing in common with their last recordings in Sweden.

"Again this opinion is indicative of someone who carefully pays attention to our career. The sound was mainly based on the guitars; we did not want to be listed as members of the circuit who has the fastest drumming! All this history about which drummer is the fastest and the best is really annoying me; we grew up with metal music where guitars were the main focus in this music. In fact, I didn´t know anything else except guitars in this music! The melodies on the guitar gave me all the inspiration I needed and that is what we tried to achieve with this album."

For years there were rumours with each new album about having elements from their masterpiece "Thy Mighty Contract"... resulting in a situation which made every album a competition to what the band had done years before, and producing a negative feeling for both the band and the fans... This pressure put Sakis in the awkward position of saying again and again why they could not make another "Thy Mighty Contract"! But with "Theogonia" nobody can say this... even the structure, apart from the quality, of the album is quite close to the vision of their most important release...

"What we tried in order to make this album more closely resemble "Thy Mighty Contract" was to incorporate fast riffs surrounded by melodies and mid tempo songs... and on "Theogonia" we captured the melodies even more closely to "Triarchy Of The Lost Lovers".

There is a rule in the music industry which says that a member of a band should not also be the producer... the reason being that the possibility of losing a dimension of the sound of the band which someone outside of the band could reveal! Xytras (producer on "A Dead Poem" and "Sleep Of The Angels") tried to have their leading riffs and melodies on the guitar in the forefront but could not reveal a raw and more dynamic sound as Sakis has carefully achieved with his work on the new album...

"The sound could not be faked by using triggers or doing copy/ paste more and more. I preferred to stack on the pure identity of the sound that came out. Surely in our days this is quite difficult but the feeling remains close to what I had intended to do... Maybe I have become a good student being around our previous producers. I certainly cannot compete with professional producers, but I did what I wanted to on this album"

All parts of the album also reveal a pure way of composing music and references to the lyrics´ part of the album... the more you listen carefully to "Theogonia", the more you realise that Sakis had focused on each riff and melody for a long period of time making him able to finally mix it perfectly on the studio!

"I remember myself during that period thinking all the time about how the new album should be... the vision of the new album really took a lot of time in its preparation. The performance of the songs didn´t make me feel anxious at all because I can play my instrument at the level that is required by my music. I do really believe that I can do it pretty well... the idea on which the album would be based was the difficult part for me! I recall waking up at night and writing material on scraps of paper or on the guitar. I spent a year in isolation trying to find secret and yet unexplored regions of my personality! From having just a thought until you proceed to finalising this thought there is art... and all in life is based on this fact!"

Art... a statement that has become a simple word in our every day life. To create art these days one must escape all that constrains you and all that is asserted by the masses...

"This fast food way of thinking in life today keeps me away from many things. The coldness nowadays creates an "easy come easy go" mentality which annoys me!"

And what is really glorious is Sakis´ ability to consolidate into his music elements which nobody would ever believe could fit so well. Just recall in the mid-90´s the opinion that Scandinavians could never achieve to consolidate their folk elements in their black metal efforts, and simply inserted them as medleys to their music! In the case of "Theogonia the tsabuna leads "Nemecic" and is able to represent the main theme of the song without the necessity of the other instruments...

"I had worked very much on this because it is quite difficult to present something like that without the possibility of being listened to with ridicule, or just being funny. I intended to make the core close to Greek tradition, and on "Threnody" the melody is taken from a song for the dead whose origin comes from Epirus. Having influences and sound close to bands from central Europe and Scandinavia doesn´t give you the chance to be unique...and all this is not creative which can make new trademarks for targeting the origin of a band!"

Unique was a statement in black metal in the 90´s... a point of view that has been forgotten through time by the new bands who just try to relive the early 90´s "glorious" days of corpse-painted black metal heroes!

"Well we never did something like that; we wanted to make our own stamp in black metal! We wanted to be unique and recognisable... we have different elements and a different point of view in our life than the Norwegians have. I sure love the Norwegian sound and some of the bands are my favourites, but what is the point of existing without having something apart from the others? Of course there is a reason for existing for everybody, but I cannot understand the bands who try to become replicas of these bands. We gained respect in the Norwegian scene which is something I intended ever since we got into contact with bands I admired such as MAYHEM, BURZUM and DARKTHRONE."

From the first generation, only MAYHEM and ROTTING CHRIST remain close to what they were back then... all the other bands are either inactive (BEHERIT, MASTER´S HAMMER, BLASPHEMY, PROFANATICA) or different from what they were, as SAMAEL is now... The reasons are understandable if you realise that underground back then had nothing to do with well-paid musicians...

"I sacrificed a lot of things... and someone has to do that if he wants to be in the forefront for all these years! There is the situation where economic insecurity pressures you to have a daily job to live your life on a normal basis... All this makes someone play in a band just for fun and only in his free time, something that didn´t happen to me! I decided to totally focus on this band... and this decision gave me as a result for many years no money! For sure having a band as I do with ROTTING CHRIST doesn´t give you standard economic stature to continue your life normally..."

Every man spends time to gain money for a purpose... and everyone has a different answer to the question: If you had a lot of money what would have changed in your life?

"Time would be changed in my life... I would gain much more freedom in my life! Now I am bound to do other kinds of work to live my every day life to pay my bills and all that surrounds my every day life. This is something that other bands which began with us didn´t do even if they had gained better acceptance than we did back then..."

Some years ago a website was the best way to reveal the virtual world of a band and provide all the information needed to anyone who is interested... but all these are old fashioned without even closing a period of 10 years!

"All these changes really confuse me and make me believe that they are unreal... They ask me all the time why I don´t have my profile on myspace! Well I don´t want to because I don´t believe in having digital friends... I don´t want to have these kinds of friends, because my own friends are in my life and they are few not hundreds! You cannot have so many friends and furthermore, friends that you have never met or don´t know anything about."

People must think you are insane to be apart from cyberspace, but this has nothing to do with real communication in cyberspace, where people reveal their thoughts, and not only their choice of an artist... and all this with just a ´click´!

"I am a romantic because I grew up in a different way, and someone would accuse me of being out of touch with reality, especially the teenagers! Of course myspace gives people the opportunity to listen to your music, but again it is something so easy which keeps you on the run to find a new band or a new song from the band you like! All this of course results in how speedy our lives are today! We were discussing for years with Euronymous about making a split EP with BURZUM... someone now can hardly realise how things were back then and which made us totally different from what dominates the whole music industry!"

Expression really comes easily today and is confusing to whoever tries to appreciate an album which will remain on his playlist for months without become boring...

"Globalisation has dominated our decisions in our everyday lives and what really scares me is the deterioration of expressing your thoughts and feelings through art..."

The lyrics have to do with speaking about God... the simple question of ´what is God´ comes with an answer that is quite in line with ROTTING CHRIST´s principles!

"For sure there is a higher power spirit which rules all in the universe and has nothing to do with religions and how people on earth approach this power!"

Religions determine a certainty of what is and what is not true around us...and our fatal error is to give them the chance to rule our ignorance on this!

"Our ignorance is their main power to control the lives of people and pit them against people of other religions! Well-organised religions are just spreading intolerance and fill the hearts of people with hate and anger... and this made well-organised communities go against other well-organised communities because of religious differences! Wars are made because of intolerance between communities with different cultures, aims and religious views! If you were to view it as if you were an alien from another world you would ask this: "Why are they doing all this mess down there? Do they really believe that their God exists and the others do not?"

Chaos theory has certain laws... one of them sets a standard of not having the chance to go back in time and reversing a decision to affect a different outcome in your future. Sakis is mature enough yet not too far from what was new to him as a teenager years ago... but could he express himself now if he was again 18 years old?

"I would not be able to do something like that... if I take my personality as a point of view for life then I would believe that teenagers today aren´t able to do things as we did back then! Certainly someone who is 18 years old doesn´t have fewer dreams than I had back then and even has something new in his mind to express... but the whole atmosphere that surrounds us gives him the choice to make statements easier and faster than we did at the same age! People this age today are more materialistic than we were 15-20 years ago because our generation grew up with moral values!"

What would inspire him to release an album if he was again new to the scene as a composer comes an answer to his lack of influences of today´s extreme metal scene...

"I have listened to a lot of albums in recent years and I have to admit that very few albums really have inner strength! Most of them come from bands with years-long careers."

And what annoys him mainly today has to do with exactly this lack of influence... focusing on techniques and ability to play your instruments faster reveals a blinkered approach to music!

"The last three years there has been a competition as to the speed in drumming... All this situation does is remind me of the poser years in the 80´s when we were laughing at people and artists who were acting as if they were the best musicians in the world! And the most terrifying of all is that there are bands now who do EXACTLY the same thing and nobody reacts... back then we were all laughing at them! All have been flattened and there are bands who perform black metal and their appearance is even close to the glam/ sleaze of the 80´s with the make up and the strange hair! Of course the appearance of the band has to do with all the art that is presented to the audience, but now we see that nobody reacts to such things and there is more focus on the appearance of a band rather than their music".

Time to capture this atmosphere surrounding ROTTING CHRIST on video... since their first attempt fell short, this time there will not be any mistakes!

"The DVD in Poland was total crap because of the "professional" way the TV wanted us to perform... stopping us and cutting a version of a song and then pushing us on stage to perform it once again was something really annoying! Our new DVD will be recorded in Greece in autumn and we will be very glad to have all our fans around the world with us at those concerts."

We then come to the conclusion that the band is close to cutting a new path in its career... alone and quite close to the vision in his mind, Sakis confirms my belief that other Greek instruments can be included in their sound, such as santouri instead of keyboards!

"This album is a starting point for us to gain a more identifiable sound... in our future releases we will try to capture even better this goal and have our vision represented more closely to our thoughts as a band"

They lost their way because of Century Media´s intention to have a certain way of recording and representing their art... This is the year of worldwide acceptance for their music and new fans are ready to realize what ROTTING CHRIST is all about! Believe it or not we are not in the mid 90´s... this is not déjà vu! ROTTING CHRIST are just close to what they had lost... faith to their beliefs!"
Thank you, Necromayhem, for keeping the faith!

P.S.: A big THANK YOU to Glenda for making this conversation presented in words!


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