—Ivar (Enslaved)
“At one time Thy Mighty Contract was the only black metal album that I was really into. The atmosphere of that album is really unique and it had an aura around it that was very different to the Norwegian cold sound.”
—Blasphemer (Mayhem/Aura Noir)
“If you want to listen to bands that are really original, then listen to Rotting Christ! Their music is so Dark, so BRUTAL! ARGH!!”
—Euronymous, Slayer Magazine
DESPITE HAILING FROM GREECE as opposed to Switzerland—and thus avoiding the isolation of coming from a country without an emerging metal movement—Rotting Christ’s story bears many parallels to that of Samael. Both are hugely influential bands that formed in 1987, have a lineup based around a pair of brothers, and have exhibited a notable evolution between each and every record.
Rotting Christ’s first sticker, provided by Sakis himself, features the band’s classic logo.
Unlike Samael, however, the path Rotting Christ walked in their early days had very little to do with black metal at all. Instead the band leaned toward grindcore, a point underlined by their demo Decline’s Return and the rehearsal tape Leprosy of Death, as well as their 1989 split seven-inch, which saw Sakis “Necromayhem” Tolis (vocals and guitars), Themis “Necrosauron” Tolis (drums), and Jim “Mutilator” Patsouris (bass) cramming in nine songs in less than six minutes. The other side of the record saw a similar display by fellow Greek death/grinders Sound Pollution, a short-lived project that also featured Sakis on vocals.
“We didn’t expect big things back then, we were so poor that we were forced even to steal our instruments in order to start playing!” remembers Sakis. “I was feeling like a junkie that couldn’t get his smack, so I was forced to do that, something that I only recovered from years after [by] giving the money to the store and apologizing, because I have never ripped anyone off in my life. We were fans of grindcore back then, though not the grindcore sound you hear nowadays, but instead something really primitive with lots of noise. Maybe this is a result of being fans of the punk attitude back then.”
Alongside these interests in punk and grind, the band’s members also bore a passion for metal, something that actually far preceded the creation of Rotting Christ. Unsurprisingly then, the trio soon decided that they wanted to draw on their original musical inspirations within their own band.
“I will be a liar if I don’t mention Iron Maiden, right?” smiles Sakis, “also bands like Motörhead, but we were really fascinated with the first-era black metal bands such as Venom, Bathory, Possessed, Hellhammer, and Celtic Frost, and we were really influenced by them in our first steps. I remember when I listened to Hellhammer for the first time, I was actually scared. I couldn’t understand how music could sound so gloomy. Every night before I slept I was listening to it on my walkman—cassette of course—in order to have a really weird sleep. The same happened when I first listened to Bathory’s song ‘Possessed’… I suddenly discovered my dark side and since then I have been following its path. We were basically a company of guys that brought this extreme metal music back to our land in the late eighties and we really wanted to create a horde that would sound like our idols.”
The Satanas Tedeum demo, released in mid-1989, clearly demonstrated this intent, not only in the title and cover art (which featured a new, more sinister logo and the inclusion of a pentagram) but also in sound. Boasting longer and darker songs, it has a primitive and cavernous sound, and a black thrash/old-school death metal vibe despite the use of keyboards—an inclusion still unusual at that time. The band then described their music as “Abyssic Death Metal,” though they explain quite rightly that this was “only because the term black metal was not yet established in the underground, and death and black metal were more or less interchangeable in those days.” In fact, when it came to Greece, extreme metal in general was still a pretty new phenomenon and the band found themselves climbing a pretty steep learning curve.
“You can’t imagine how hard it was back then for a band that came from Greece, especially during the late eighties when everyone considered Greece an exotic country that was a good place for a vacation and nothing more. But on the other hand, it was a challenge and challenges always make you work harder than normal. You know what created the biggest problem? There were no other Greek bands that had experience of the central European attitude [to releasing music and touring], so we were forced to learn everything from zero and that took a lot of time.”
1990 turned out to be a quiet time for the band, but the following year saw them continuing in a similar musical vein on a single entitled Dawn of the Iconoclast and a mini-album, Passage To Arcturo, that saw the addition of synth player George Zaharopoulos, alternately known as Morbid, Magus Wampyr Daoloth, and now simply The Magus. Passage would be the first release to really carve an identity for the group and impress an international audience. Finland native Mikko Aspa (best known for his work in Clandestine Blaze and Deathspell Omega) recalls its impact:
“It presented black metal in the way that I prefer it,” he comments. “Unique, untrendy, free of formulas typical of the era, and free of ‘scenester’ influence. It would be as dark as black metal can get, without sounding like anyone in Sweden, Finland, USA, or Norway. While trendies would jump into popular sounds and gain popularity, the sound of Rotting Christ would remain untainted by false copycats. This is the nature of true black metal, when it is an uncontrolled, spontaneous dark force in both music and lyrics/artwork.”
While the quality of the material on the mini-album would certainly play its part in breaking the band to a larger audience, it also undoubtedly helped matters that the group—like many others at the time—had been busily trading with the underground for some time.
“Back then I was in contact with almost all the bands that were around,” explains Sakis. “That was a really important matter of my life, I became a freak and totally addicted to that. A new demo, a new fanzine, a new letter… I was expecting the postman everyday as if he were Santa Claus. He was bringing to me food for my soul. If he was bringing some demos then it was my day, if not I was falling into depression.”
The combination of underground trading and impressive recordings began to bring the band to the attention of extreme metal fans worldwide and soon the group was signed by Osmose, who released their debut full-length Thy Mighty Contract, a genuine milestone recording. Demonstrating a noticeably more considered approach than their earlier output, the album put both Rotting Christ and Greece into the consciousness of the black metal scene, providing an early showcase of what would became known as the “Greek black metal sound.”
This new approach to the genre was defined by surprisingly melodic heavy metal riffs, the use of guitar harmonies, prominent bass, and a far less caustic and treble-heavy production than the one generally coming out of Northern Europe. Moreover, though the record featured a drum machine, it was a take on the genre that was noticeably “warm” in tone—something frequently attributed to the sweltering region from whence it came and a trait that has become fairly traditional among the Greek bands that followed.
“It is in fact true that the Scandinavians have a colder, more ‘reverbed’ sound, whilst the South Europeans have a more heavy and warm sound in their guitars,” opines Alexandros Antoniou of second-generation Greek acts Macabre Omen and The One. “Do not forget that music is art and art always gets inspired by something. The cold is very accessible in the Northern lands, hence the freezing sound and vice versa.”
“I wouldn’t say it was the climate exactly, but I can say more the mentality of the southern people,” Sakis ponders when asked for the reasons behind these distinctive aural traits. “We were always expressing an alternative way on how black metal could sound, even if we were never as extreme as other bands. I think it was a good thing that almost all the bands were recording in the same studio back then, that was a time when we created a unique sound and the relations between the local bands were really
strong. It was a place where you could exchange ideas and so on, a meeting point. I am proud that we had created a strong and influential scene back then.”
Indeed, a major catalyst for the creation of this “Greek template” was the use of the band’s own Storm Studios, a location that would soon be used by many other bands in the local scene, many of whom would share members with Rotting Christ at one time or another.
“It was the time that every band wanted to create its own sound,” explains The Magus, keyboard player and second vocalist on Thy Mighty Contract. While he would not begin engineering Rotting Christ until the band’s second album, he had already engineered works by a number of other bands at Storm and would produce or engineer for bands such as Septic Flesh, Kawir, Astarte, and Varathron as well as his own groups Necromantia and Thou Art Lord.
“When I started working on production I always wanted to underline the lyrical part of the music, which was the melody and the atmosphere, the unique characteristic of the Greek bands,” he explains. “You see, in Greece the music was always more emotionally charged than the other scenes. It is in the Greek soul. Furthermore I come from a strong heavy metal background and it was kind of natural to go for the feeling, rather than a brutal ton-of-bricks sound. The funny thing is that the equipment we used was pretty cheap since there was not enough money and we were trying a lot of recipes and experiments until we got a decent sound. Combinations of various amplifiers, expensive microphones, cheap microphones, both combined and a lot more. We had to be inventive and creative!”
Left: Rotting Christ: Satanas Tedeum demo, 1989. Right: Flyer for The Black Arts / The Everlasting Sins, the 1992 split release of Necromantia and Varathron, two of Greece’s most seminal bands.
Based in Athens, Storm Studios became a focal point for the country’s growing black metal movement, bringing together like-minded individuals for various musical and non-musical endeavors. Their recordings soon spread worldwide, with records released by European labels such as Osmose and Holy Records as well as the Athens-based Unisound Records.
“Most of the bands knew each other,” explains The Magus. “We were not that many back then so we hung around at the same places and everybody was trying to add their own sound and record an album. The most important bands besides Necromantia and Rotting Christ were: Varathron, Septicemia, Septic Flesh, Horrified, and Death Courier and later on Kawir, Zemial, and Nergal emerged with a strong impact. Like everywhere, only a few had serious interest in the dark side. Few were (and are still) involved in it. I proudly consider myself one of them. My quest through the Abyss has never stopped… For the wide majority it was the ‘heavy metal Satanism’ which attracted them. You know, a little bit of rebellion, sex, diversity… the usual. But still even this attitude is okay since it creates less sheep!”
Of all the Greek bands, however, it was Rotting Christ who had the biggest international presence and it’s notable that one interested party at the time was Deathlike Silence, the Norwegian label owned by Euronymous of Mayhem, with only the latter’s death ending the union between the two parties.
“We were so close to doing a split LP with Burzum but Euronymous’ death meant this couldn’t be done. I was really good friends with Euronymous—in fact, the first-ever Mayhem show outside of Norway was actually supposed to take part in Greece. We had booked the show and we were waiting for the band in the train station to come from Norway, but due to the wrong understanding [sic] of a letter that was received by a relative of Euronymous’ when the band was on the road—we didn’t have mobiles or e-mails back then—the band was informed by mistake that they cannot play in Greece but in Turkey. I still can’t understand how this happened, but that’s why the first band’s show outside of Norway was in Turkey.”
One can only speculate about how a split with Norway’s Burzum—and a release on Deathlike Silence—might have affected the band’s career, but it’s fair to say that their relationship with Osmose certainly didn’t do them any harm, and quickly led to an increased international profile. This was further bolstered when the band set off—along with Canadians Blasphemy and Norwegians Immortal—on the legendary Fuck Christ tour.
“It was a great experience for us, though I only remember blurry things. We were not the band that drank alcohol a lot, we were more into smoking pot the whole day. We were stoned all the time and were also inexperienced kids facing first-time experiences. I remember shows were cancelled because of death threats from Christians, people [in the audience] were cutting their veins… every day was a new experience with strange things happening, a really primitive black metal era!”
Recording again in Storm Studios and retaining the drum machine, 1994’s Non Serviam continued—to some extent at least—where Thy Mighty Contract left off. Engineered by The Magus and produced by the band, it undoubtedly offered a far grander and more majestic sound, heavier use of synth, and a greater sense of dynamics than its predecessor.
“You can hear that Non Serviam has a heavier, fuller sound than Thy Mighty Contract,” comments The Magus. “It was the successor of a highly successful album and it had to be better! We recorded a lot more guitars and we tried a variation of guitar amplifiers—back then downtuning was not known so we had to record six guitars in order to choose the ones we wanted and mix them together. We also tried to make the cheap drum triggering sound a little bit better! We were really satisfied because we got the atmosphere we wanted and Sakis’ songwriting has started to shape and mature, thus creating more solid songs. I think that Non Serviam was the album which shaped Rotting Christ’s sound for the years that followed.”
Rotting Christ today, the Tolis brothers still at the helm decades later. Courtesy of Century Media.
Powerful and dramatic, it remains one of the band’s finest records, yet was also indirectly responsible for one of the most trying periods of the band’s existence. Sakis explains:
“Like Thy Mighty Contract, Non Serviam was created under the influence of holy smoke and I still consider this album to be the one with the most Rotting Christ riffs ever. It was not, however, accepted as that hot by the underground community back then because its distribution was more than shitty. It was released by Unisound which was a label only on paper… they had nothing to do with any promotion outside of Greek territories, so this album suffered from a really bad distribution. We actually had thoughts to split up the band back then.”
Indeed, in a pre-Internet age, there were many outside Greece who thought that the band had split up, simply because they never saw the appearance of the Non Serviam album, or at least not until many, many years later. The group’s reaction to such trials, however, should remain both an inspiration and a lesson for any band facing hard times.
“A soldier never abandons the battlefield!” says Sakis. “We got a car and drove the whole continent in order to give our recordings to labels by hand. Of course it was really hard, because we had no money for this travel and I remember we were sleeping in the car with the danger of losing our lives, especially when we were crossing the Alps. Our sleep there could easily have been our last, and an eternal one, because we almost froze.”
Fortunately the hard work paid off and the group were soon signed by Century Media, who released 1996’s Triarchy of the Lost Lovers. As well as losing keyboard player The Magus (who found the band’s new direction too melodic and gothic in nature) and the drum machine—Necrosauron returning to the drum kit from this point on—the band also departed Storm, recording in Germany with Andy Classen of Teutonic thrashers Holy Moses. The result was a shift away from the black metal sound of old, toward a more traditional heavy metal-oriented approach, yet with the vocal aggression and much of the heaviness present on earlier recordings. The 1997 follow-up, A Dead Poem, would move even further away from the black metal scene, building upon the heavy metal dimension and combining it with gothic overtones, a fusion that saw the band reaching their biggest audiences to date.
The Magus meanwhile would concentrate on Necro
mantia, arguably Greece’s second biggest name in black metal and one that famously used two bass guitars (one eight-stringed) in place of any rhythm guitar, a trait they maintain even today. He would also continue to make music with Sakis in Thou Art Lord, creating what he describes as “pure thrash/death/black metal the old way,” and would also find an unlikely creative partner in Mika Luttinen of Finnish outfit Impaled Nazarene, with whom he would work on two industrial metal projects, Raism and Diabolos Rising.
Over the years, Rotting Christ would gradually return to heavier and more blackened territories, their 2007 album Theogonia even being hailed by some as their best work yet, introducing ethnic Greek elements that have remained in the records that have followed, the band making heavy use of traditional Greek choirs to impressive effect.
All in all, Rotting Christ have proved to be an ever-shifting entity musically, yet even now they remain defined, and even restricted, by their provocative band name, which over the years has offended many overzealous religious types. These include American politician and one-time Republican candidate Gary Bauer—a man with ties to evangelical Christian groups who famously criticized rap metal act Rage Against The Machine for being “anti-family and pro-terrorist”—as well as Megadeth frontman and born-again Christian Dave Mustaine, who demonstrated his own intolerance by having the band thrown off the bill of two large Greek festivals in 2005. Having braved the cold of the Alps in the name of his art, Sakis has little time for such individuals.
Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult Page 12