Twenty years after they began their epic and arduous journey through the darkest and heaviest side of metal music, Greece’s Rotting Christ remains one of the most consistent and interesting bands of nowadays, always sticking to their guns creatively and gradually building their successful career without missing a step. Their latest work “Aealo” is already regarded as one of 2010 greatest works and quite possibly their finest and most complete album to date.
Vocalist, guitarist, main composer and mastermind Sakis Tolis must be vindicated and feeling proud of what he and his mates have accomplished throughout the years, principally considering they had to face many trials and tribulations due to their ostensively blasphemous moniker. Scratch the Surface had to find out more about “Aealo” and where comes the fire that keeps the Greeks going and inspires them to produce such great and strong music, so we approached Sakis through e-mail for a little chat. Read on…

You’ve been doing this for 21 years, what would you say is the key to Rotting Christ's longevity?

“Our deep dedication to the Metal way of life, I can’t think of any other reason. Let me think…hmmm no money, no comfortable life, many sacrifices…hmm… We are addicted to Metal bro!”
I remember Tom Araya from Slayer once stating in a interview that he didn’t imagined himself growing old and playing this type of music, even though right now he is running up to his 50 and still there’s no sign of wearing off or slowing down.
Do you have any plans of stopping and doing other styles of music, or are you just going indefinitely with Rotting Christ for as long as possible?

“Such personalities give me power to keep on creating and when sometimes I have those strange feelings about life…what am I doing, why I am doing this, I think of such musicians that even some of them are reaching the age of 60 and still rock and I say to myself…I will keep on struggling. My goal is to die on the stage!”

Going into more specific about the new album, you must be pretty pleased with the critical response so far, I mean it was album of the month in several publications like Terrorizer and Metal Hammer?

“Yes that makes me proud, I do not hide. I am really honoured that our new album ‘AEALO’ has been embraced from the audience worldwide in a really positive way. That’s my goal and that’s why I am still creating music. To talk to people souls and it seems that ‘AEALO’ has managed to do so.”

“Aealo” displays a marked progression for the group and introduces new elements into their sound, it could be described as a more diverse and adventurous album with the band further exploring new levels of melody and new arrangements. There are a number of diverse layers and different instruments included, and a dash of classic metal riffing and various vocalizations that add a sense of drama to the songs, without a doubt their most Mediterranean work to date.
What were the predominant inspirations and driving forces behind the creation of "Aealo", I’ve heard that it was a difficult album to piece together?

“Yes it was a really difficult album. As an artist I had to surpass my abilities. So I took really seriously the composing process and I isolated for more than a year in order to find out a way for unexplored paths of my soul. I worked different this time, I was based more on the thoughts and less on playing guitar, I philosophized a lot, I slept a little and I finally came up with ‘AEALO’. An album that I want to believe that will bring the band a step up and judging by the first feedback I think that we did managed to create a worthy and maybe better work than ‘THEOGONIA’, where we started heading towards this Greek direction. ‘AEALO’ is our most Hellenic outcome ever and opens a new era for the band.”

“Aealo” which translates as destruction in Hellenic is a concept album (a first for Rotting Christ) revolving around war and the feelings that emanate in a battlefield. The band aimed to convey the new album with the various feelings and emotions that only a catastrophic experience like a war can create, just like a soundtrack to an epic war movie. If “Aealo” could be compared to a classic war movie, what would it be?

“It is a soundtrack brother…Nothing to do with a warlike album though. It just trip you into a battlefield, something like the ‘300’ movie if you want to reference it to a movie picture. It’s all to do with art here and there are no political things or such bullshit.”

So now that “Aealo” is available to the public, what do you think is the next step for the band? There’s a new European tour with Bolt Thrower already lined-up for the promotion of the album right?

“Hitting the road performing in every corner of this planet where a metal heart beats.
The ‘AEALO’ tour will pass through many places from various lands and I am pretty sure that will pass through your land too. Till then…KEEP THE HORNS RISING”

David Alexandre

More info at: www.myspace.com/rottingchristabyss

US post-metal experimentalists Mouth of the Architect are about to hit Europe for the first time in their career bringing with them a new EP called “The Violence Beneath” to peace the hunger of their devoted fans anxiously awaiting for the successor of their brilliant third album “Quietly”. An unprepared David Alexandre tries to find out more information about this new work, which opens a new chapter on the band’s career from guitarist and vocalist Steve Brooks through e-mail, who is more than willing to make some corrections.

It's been almost two years since we've last heard from Ohio’s Mouth of the Architect in the form of new material. The band has been touring heavily in support of their critically acclaimed third full length work “Quietly” and even right now they’re getting ready to hit the road for a full European tour.
Surprisingly, despite all the time spent on a van the four-piece are about to issue a new EP called “The Violence Beneath” that serves as stop-gap release while we’re still waiting for a new full-length work.

“It does seem like it's been a while but we typically release an album every two years or so. This new EP is actually over thirty minutes long. It could've been considered a full length, but it only has 4 songs on it, and one is a cover. So it's an EP. We'll probably release a new full length sometime in the next couple of years. I hope that doesn't piss anyone off.”

Thank you for taking time to answer these questions as you gear up for a new tour. Are you looking forward to play before a European audience for what I believe it’s the first time?

“Thanks you for asking the questions. Oh yeah, we're definitely excited about going to Europe for the first time as a band. We keep hearing good things from other US bands about how touring in Europe is so much better than in the US and we're finally going to go find out for ourselves. Two of the members have been to Europe before touring with bands, but it's the first time for the rest of us and we are really ready to go. (Dave went with Dead Blue Sky and Kevin went with Twelve Tribes). I'm excited just to experience different cultures and people and go to countries with a real history... and play some fucking rock 'n roll in the process.”

You’ve been touring incessantly since “Quietly” came out in 2008, how do you keep the energy up when you spend life on the road for several months straight?

“Well, we actually haven't been touring as much as you might think these last couple of years. Since "Quietly" came out we have done a month with Today is the Day, a month and a half with Intronaut and Behold… the Arctopus, a few weeks with Zoroaster, and a few weeks just us headlining. (There might be something I'm forgetting about, but not much more than that). We needed to take some time off from being on the road as much as we used to. We were all kind of in bad shape after "Quietly" came out, just with life in general. We needed some time to work, hang out with our girlfriends and get things in order a bit. When we did used to go on the road for extended periods of time it wasn't really hard to keep up the energy because you just kind of get used to it. I don't know how to explain it really, but living in a van and not really having a home, being somewhere different every night just starts to feel normal. We would go back to the same cities/venues so much that we had friends everywhere we went. It was really just like one big, long party.”

Such touring ethics have made some casualties throughout the years with a number of members leaving the band, is it hard to cope with all the hardships of a touring band like Mouth of the Architect, do you ever break into fights more or less serious?

“We have definitely had our share of fights and drama with people leaving the band or getting too drunk and doing stupid shit or whatever. We're all just a bunch of crazy nerds. I'm not going to go into any details right now, but yeah it's hard to deal with. We have had some seriously terrible moments with drinking and drugs and people fighting, quitting the band, or ending up in jail. Good times!?”

Going back to “Quietly”, it garnered some incredible reactions all from around the globe. You must be pretty pleased with the critical response so far?

“Really!? I hope it went over as well as all that! I've seen great reviews, horrible reviews, and the same old stuff about that album. We "sound like Neurosis and Isis" one day and we're "taking post metal to a new level" the next. We just make music we love and put everything we have into it and see what comes out. We had a lot of time in the studio and a great engineer/producer for "Quietly". Chris Common you rule. Sorry we couldn’t afford to do the EP with you this time. Anyway, yeah I hope everyone likes the album and will continue to check out or music and come support us on the road.”

A lot of people were surprised at first to see you returning to a less accessible song writing that somehow remounts to your early days isn’t that so?

“I've heard that a million times and I just don't agree with it. In a lot of ways the song writing and structure is more complex than on "The Ties that Blind" ...just in a different way. I think people just found out that Alex was back in the band for "Quietly" and their conclusions of the album were based by that. Alex did play a part in writing the album but it wasn't like we dropped everything we had and changed our whole sound and writing process to make the songs sound like "Time and Withering." Actually exactly the opposite, Alex and I sat down and said that we wanted to write something completely different. We used to sit around the house and play guitar and talk about writing the prettiest, heaviest album ever. I don't know if we hit that goal but it turned out the way it did because of a group effort to make a great album and where we were all at mentally and emotionally during that time in our lives. We weren't very happy if you couldn't tell.”

Meanwhile, there’s a new EP in the pipeline featuring Joe Lester from your touring buddies and kindred spirits Intronaut on bass. What can you tell us about “The Violence Beneath”? It’s a collection of new songs or it’s made up of songs that were lying around unfinished?

“Well, "The Violence Beneath" is not an album as a whole like "Quietly" was. It is comprised of two brand new songs, a live recording of a new song that was never released, and a cover song. We did this album more just to put something new out and to have some fun with it. We love the new songs but we didn't want to put the time and effort into writing a whole comprehensive album like we have in the past. We did this album in a short period of time with a small budget and just had fun with it. The new songs are a lot different than anything the band has released in the past. We did that on purpose... it was like a new beginning for us after all the disastrous member changes and everything. We wanted to do something that was still MOTA but didn't "sound like Neurosis and Isis" and was something that we could have fun experimenting with. A lot of tracks were recorded at different times in different places so it is kind of a collaboration album. It was great to have our friends do the whole thing with us. Our friend Chris Fullam did the cover art, John Lakes engineered it and played bass on the cover song, our good friend Joe Lester played bass on the new songs, and we got to release all the material that we had been working on so we can start from a clean slate with a new record.”

Have you already started thinking or writing for a new full-length album yet, if so how are the new songs shaping up and how do they stand against the previous works?

“We have actually started jamming on some new stuff and it's going really well. I think the newer stuff still sounds like old MOTA but has a bit of this new record sound in it as well. We have the slow drony heavy riffs but a lot of it is really melodic and has a lot more singing/ yelling rather than the harsh screaming. We also have been putting a lot more energetic faster riffs into the songs to change it up a bit. We just like to write music and we'll keep on doing it until we're too old to play our instruments... however it ends up sounding we'll be happy with it.”

Considering that guitarist Alex Vernon had a big input in the writing of “Quietly” and he is no longer with the band, to where do you see the band’s sound growing to in the upcoming future?

“There again, everyone just perceives that since Alex came back into the band "Quietly" was all him. Not true. He did have input into the songs, but we didn't change anything drastically because he came back. He had more input into the lyrics than anything actually. He really does have a way with words that can make you want to go cry and kill yourself or whatever but the album was written as a band, like we always write. Someone always has to have the riffs or melodies that will shape the song but in most cases that wasn't Alex. The new songs are written with exactly the same formula. We bring some riffs together and we jam on them to feel them out and form them into songs. Everyone in the band has a say and puts their own ideas, riffs and structures into the songs. We are going to take our time before releasing a new record and it will be the best record MOTA has ever done.”

Is there any guiding principle whenever you start approaching the writing of a new record like for example not repeating the same things over and over again?
Do you feel that music has to be challenging or let me rephrase the question do you feel that MOTA’s approach to writing music has to be a continuing challenge for all of you?

“I personally don't feel that the music HAS to be anything. As long as we are happy with what we're doing then that's all that matters. The song writing process has evolved from the beginning and it will continue to evolve to the circumstances that we are in at the time. Writing music is a challenge. Working with other people and somehow getting something real out of a group of people's ideas is definitely hard, but it is also really fun and rewarding. I just hope that no one dies or loses an appendage or gets arthritis or something stupid so we can keep on writing music until we're 60 years old and senile. We're gonna invent a new kind of rock... give it a few years.”

David Alexandre

More info at: www.myspace.com/mouthofthearchitect

“Wrath of Creation’s” opening track "Rise of the Fallen" starts off with an impressive double bass drumming and a fierce, skilful and catchy riffing that evokes memories of Lamb of God’s razor sharp attack juxtaposed with a typically Swedish sense for melody and dynamics. It’s a crushing opener that will violently grab us by the balls and force us to take notice.
The following tracks from this impressive debut EP also sees the young Portuguese act skilfully straddling the line between American and Swedish metal and although their influences are easily identifiable it never turns into some shameless homage to relevant artists peddling these two characteristic and highly influential styles of music. Third track for instance “Bitter Life” has a Swedish death-metal backbone somewhat reminiscent of Amon Amarth, it’s powerful, catchy and fairly melodic with the guitars showcasing more harmonies, some even could be considered epic. “Whispers” also has an epic tinge in their harmonized guitars, masterfully supported by a skilful guitar solo and a remarkable drum work that keeps the rhythm constantly transiting between a furious and a pummelling mid-tempo pace.
Despite having formed a mere three years ago, Insanus already reveals a strong and extremely focused song-writing grip and could easily evolve into one of the most interesting and devastating acts from Portugal’s current metal crop. (7/10)

David Alexandre

Band info: www.myspace.com/insanusmusic

Hollow Branches is a project created by Robert Hunter, Marius Sjøli from Formloff and Self Spiller and Jason Walton from Agalloch, and to give you a rough idea of what to expect their second EP “Anchored in Sleep” brought to mind the most ethereal moments of Anathema and In the Woods, and in some stances the introspective ambiences of someone like Sigur Ros. While it doesn’t sound wholly innovative, “Anchored in Sleep” still showcases some interesting and effective ideas. It’s replete with diversity, drawing influences from a wide and varied palette of musical textures and layers like trip pop, post-rock, ambient and progressive music, without ever lacking in coherence.
Most of songs dwell in a minimal and reflective ambience with the grieving and gentle voice of Robert Hunter echoing atop layers of acoustic guitars, tremolo guitar harmonies, noisy distortion and some synth elements. The post-rock and shoegaze influences are more noticeable in songs like "Steel Flowers" and the title theme, bearing some similarities with Oceansize and to some extent Anathema. The other tracks “Ivory Dream” and “Impending Mourning Haunts” are more infused with ambient and electronic elements, yet always remaining sad and melancholic.
This is great music, Hollow Branches has the ability to take you on a contemplative and introspective journey, so lean back in your bed and stare at the ceiling, while your mind gets invaded with whatever thoughts are haunting your closet these days. (7/10)

David Alexandre

Band info: www.myspace.com/hollowbranches

Removed from anything resembling a melody or a glossy note, “Aon” showcases six young Scots beating the crap out of their instruments like a youngster Napalm Death. This is fast, intense, crusty and downright brutal and that’s the way a genuine grind-core release should sound, simple as that. Ablach (which means “mangled carcass” in Gaelic) just want to grind, damn fast and with an immense fury, as if they feel the need to discharge all their rage on us after being robbed with extreme violence and then mistaken by thieves by an overzealous police force that had incarcerated and beaten them senseless until they confess a crime they didn’t commit.
Ablach retain all the major grind elements that are essential to any self-respected grind-core release and detract from modern and rather show off tendencies, and proof of that is that their cover version of Napalm Death’s “Unchallenged Hate” seems to fit pretty well with their original material. However, there are some flaws to be found on “Aon”, the biggest one being their rather weak and indiscernible guitar sound, which sounds like a chainsaw chopping flesh and bones at a distant basement.
Of course, they don’t add anything new or innovative to the style, yet that’s perhaps what most of you grind freaks crave for, just like those people who prefer their whiskey straight. There’s not much to add, if you dig pure unadulterated grind along the likes of Napalm Death, Repulsion and Terrorizer then check these guys out. (6/10)

David Alexandre

Band info: www.myspace.com/ablach

Leaning towards a symphonic black-metal style tinged with some gothic-metal nuances, Darkside of Innocence’s debut full-length “Infernum Liberus EST” is heavily reminiscent of everyone’s favourite dark-romantic-black-metal outfit Cradle of Filth.
Like the British act, the Portuguese group rely heavily on dark and tenebrous ambiences created by a massive use of keyboards and their interplay with an equally melodic and fierce guitar work. Their affection for the Filth is also noticeable in their varied vocal approach, counterbalancing the male shrieked black-metal voice there are gentle female gothic vocalizations and occasionally deep narrated vocal passages in a horror movie style. The band tries to balance some grim and harsh elements with the subtlety of their atmospheric passages, yet even at their most fervent mood, there’s a strong sense of melody and accessibility prevailing in their sound, which eventually might detract some of the most elitist followers of black-metal. The production values are also more than tolerable and decipherable than the grimmest and most common standards of black metal, yet there’s a horrible triggered drum click that renders their sound a somewhat bland and synthetic touch.
Overall, Darkside of Innocence are a promising act, already revealing some strong and mature compositional skills, even if in some sections they still have some refining to do and yeah they do need to distance themselves from the Filth’s shadow a bit further as well. (6/10)

David Alexandre

Band info: www.myspace.com/darksideofinnocence

Plying a sound that dwells between the most ethereal, abstract moments of Tool and the progressive intricacies of bands like Riverside and Porcupine Tree, ManInFeast’s “How One Becomes What One Is” EP aims for a thoughtfully diverse and intriguing sound and most of the times it’s quite successful at it. Their debut EP reveals a band with a strong potential and with interesting musical ideas that show a reluctance to be trapped into a single stylistic corner, yes we’re able to detect and point out their influences throughout these five themes, but on the overall it’s extremely hard to pigeonhole them into a specific genre.
While on first theme “Speaking Void” the vibe is predominantly of a progressive act in the mould of the aforementioned Riverside and Porcupine Tree, the second song sees ManInFeast covering wider musical areas, starting with some tribal percussion and Arabic scales and then plunging into a more emotional and aggressive sound that reveals some post-rock and shoegaze influences, with delightful variations between melodic subtleness and sonic tension.
“Keynesian Model” is an industrial instrumental song that isn’t too far removed from Nine Inch Nails and feels a bit out of place here, yet it’s in both “Beyond Blindness” and “Magic Stones” where the influence of Tool is most noticeable. The band displays a marvellous ability to create quiet, subtle and hypnotic rhythms and then slowly raising the tension and pace until it culminates in outbursts of sonic fury and aggressiveness.
“How One Becomes What One Is” is an interesting and surprising work from this young Portuguese band and I’m looking forward to hear more from them in the future. (7/10)

David Alexandre

Band info: www.myspace.com/maninfeast