Misery has many ways of showing itself. It can inflict pain, disgust, frustration, grief, death and social decay. With so many negativities this is no surprise why an artist would want to express humanity's failure to protect itself from evils such as religion's corruption or from its own self destruction. Moreover, every person has dilemmas in choosing a life pattern for him or sometimes reflections of being near a deathly experience. One of those artists that chose to focus on such a hefty depth of mystery and doom like desolation was the Aussie Phil Howlett.

Starting his project as a one man deal, Howlett conjured additional partners to his gloomy writing that eventually were formed into a band of four. ROTE MARE is the face of everything that is foul and dark. By taking deep influences from classic acts such as 70s era of BLACK SABBATH, 80s epoch of TROUBLE and CELTIC FROST, pain and disgust took harsher meanings under the strong criticism that Howlett fed the gloomy seven tracked debut album of "Serpents Of The Church" via Altsphere Production.

More than an hour of traditional Doom Metal aura sucked me in knee deep into a profound sense of loss. I could actually feel the torment and agony through the slow tempos of the songs while the fuzz like guitars blazoned with simple power chords that created the same known triton set of riffs that once nourished BLACK SABBATH in the early days. Here and there, I could sometimes heed to a few lead guitar, 70s oriented merely, the cut through the desperate air. I didn't quite connect to some of those but in overall it wasn't that bad. Furthermore, the distressed vocals of Howlett that went on from being a soaring cry to a raspy even towards the harsher kind of tone, sliced through my mind as it expressed the ailing heart of dying hope. I listened to many Doom Metal releases over the years but ROTE MARE turned out to be one of those that sank in hard into my conciseness.

With all my thoughts regarding religion and what its evil side can impose on others, I mostly identified with the opening "Serpents Of The Church". Although there were a large number of critics regarding the position of the Church and its dark mischief, the lyrical concept of the song provided enough information for many to think about. Better still, the music, even that like on the others, maintained the same exact form of ordinary Doom Metal long length passages that might unintentionally facilitate a few yawns, matched almost to perfection with the concept that Howlett wished to utilize. I can say that "Funeral Song" that I perceived as the last moments of a dying man or the demise of the soul and its surroundings, had the same knack that was used on the former. "Children Of The Sabbath", the closing track, was different than the others as ROTE MARE presented their 70's giants by celebrating a song with a lyrical direction that mentioned a good number BLACK SABBATH's songs. If you remember, once MEGADETH did the same for, but for themselves, with the song "Victory" in 1994.

Negativity has many names and faces. ROTE MARE locked into several concepts and made an album of them. Musically, this material is mainly an ordinary Doom Metal insertion that didn't attempt to reinvent the past. Fans of the subgenre will indulge this album yet it is also recommended for old school Heavy Metal worshipers.