Rotting Christ - Triarchy of the Lost Lovers
Review: Rotting Christ generate another decadent exploration of melodic black metal in a subgenre steadily evolving closer to mainstream rock and influencing their work toward the same. This release features basic songs with predictable parts and elements, based around two or three structures per song which take black metal rhythm and make it almost campfire music with a bouncy, happy, skippy kickbeat.
Where northern black metal bands ride a rhythmic continuum, Rotting Christ will rock out an undulating rhythm and then pause for emphasis on the triumphant conclusion. Often phrases are structured simply like show tunes and so have very definitive, obvious and satisfying endings which make me wonder how product this really is. In that is the paradox of this album; it is beautiful music in its own right but as it follows vapid ideals, it lacks the content to back the aesthetik of beauty it projects.