I only new ROT as a name, a band from Greece that after a while we lost its tracks. None of us had heard any news from those guys, until now. ROT are back with a fresh album on their hands called The time Has Come and here we are to listen to their new work and see if this long waiting was worthwhile.

It was back in 2002 when the band made its first steps in the music industry with the debut album Rabid Outbreak Through, when the members of the band were still university students. Their experimental, let's say, Metal had a positive effect in the Greek market. One year later their second album pRovOcaTiv came out. But even though all things showed that ROT would have a good future, after having many awards for their artistic point of view, videos, artwork etc, things inside the band weren't that good. As their bio is saying ...dispute amongst the band members lead to the departure of nearly all members.... Buttons still believed in that band and wanted to keep the name. With an old friend of his, Nickoz, he started to work on new material. After incredible coincidences, as they say, occurred the band had a new lineup and recorded their third album with the spot-on title The Time Has Come.

As for the album itself? Well, you have to listen to it lots of times in order to start to get the feeling of it. Here we are dealing with fifteen compositions (including a cover of Maggie Reilly's Everytime We Touch) of folk Metal but with having a sound that for me is getting closer to the one that SENTENCED had after the departure of Taneiy Jarva. And when I'm writing folk I mean Greek folk music. For example The Path, which is their first video of the album as well and can be found in the CD, is based on Epirotic rhythm! I'm not sure if this is a cover as well, but it is an interesting song. ROT invited some friends of the band members and some other musicians to help them give life in their compositions. Like Giorgos Pagdatis, a well known conductor, Evi Stilianou helping with the duet for the Everytime We Touch cover and let's mention last but not least David Lynch, a famous soprano saxophone player which if you are into Jazz music you should definitely know about!

One other thing that will make you give some kudos to ROT is the voice of Mylo. This kind of voice, and with such a good accent, is very difficult to find it here in Greece. Imagine something between Jorn Lande and Ville Laihiala, but he surely needs work to find himself among them. The only dissonances are that, even though the production is really nice, I believe that they should do more work on the sound of the drums and for some of the guitars and that the album is neither 'Metal'  nor 'Rock'. It is something between and that thing may be bad because some listeners may find it more heavy than they can stand and some others too soft.

An album that one can say is a new start for ROT, thus the title. An interesting album that needs the attention of the listener, a surely not background music. They have a long path to walk but they are on the right track.

P.S.: I don't think that the cover of the early 90's hit has a place on this album.