Five years have passed since “The Heretics”, the longest time so far between two full-length releases of Rotting Christ, and the band’s fourteenth album is a fact. “Pro Xristoy” a title that will surely confuse fans who don’t know Greek. The actual pronunciation is “Pro Christou” and it means “Before Christ”. For the previous record I wrote that it was the one I enjoyed the most after “Theogonia”, for this one I still have mixed feelings after listening to it several times.
And this has nothing to do with the direction of the music, the album moves in a style we all expected. It’s mid-tempo, it focuses on creating atmosphere, it has choruses, it has of course the trademark melodies that Sakis writes with characteristic ease. It’s Rotting Christ of recent albums in general and I have no objection to that, although there are riffs that I think I’ve heard somewhere before. Maybe their older fans still remember the masterpieces of the first period but that has nothing to do with us but with how each artist wants to express himself.
What made a very negative impression on me are “The Sixth Day” and “Pix Lax Dax”. The former “borrows”, to put it elegantly, the main riff from “My Salvation” and the latter is almost identical to “The Silence”. Two compositions that exist in Sakis’ solo album “Among The Fires Of Hell” that came out in 2022. A big foul for a band to recycle older material, since he is the exclusive composer in both cases anyway, especially when in the announcement for “Pro Xristoy” they mentioned brand new songs. They are not brand new and I personally consider it a very wrong move on their part.
Besides that, the band continues the successful formula they have been following for at least ten years. The one that made their name even bigger and as a result they are constantly on tour or in big festivals around the world. So, for those who like their latest works, I see no reason not to like “Pro Xristoy”. Because, apart from the fact that Sakis copied himself, it’s another great Rotting Christ album that keeps the listener’s interest from the beginning to the end.
