Rote Mare – Serpents of The Church

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Australia is not a traditional haven for doom metal bands, but Rote Mare have been plugging away for six years now. The first four of those were spent relentlessly releasing demos, finally getting as far as a commerically-issued EP in 2010 and eventually a full album this year. Rote Mare are a very varied doom band, and within any given song they go through several doom-related styles one after the other. The problem is that they don’t do it as fluently as that kind of approach necessitates. Throughout the course of the eleven-minute opening title track they cover traditional, funeral and death doom, but none of the passages really flow into each other. Glancing at the display and seeing that the same song is still playing after seven minutes is likely to come as a genuine surprise because of the stop-start transitions between each part. Indeed no track on this six-song effort clocks in at under seven minutes and the stylistic changes they employ during each song to justify such longevity often fale to properly fire. This is a genuine shame because somewhere in here is a first class traditional doom band. Their eagerness to mix influences from bands like Celtic Frost are currently what is holding them back, not because those influences are misplaced, but because they haven’t been amalgamated with their Reverend Bizarre-styled traditional doom base that comes naturally to the band, ending up much like oil on water. This is never more evident than on twelve-minute epic The Martyr, which covers no more ground than any other track. Ridiculously obvious ode to Black Sabbath Children of The Sabbath, name-checking songs and borrowing lyrical and musical parts left, right and centre – which itself drags on for over eleven minutes – ends up being the most entertaining song here, when it really should have been the tongue-in-cheek bonus track. This makes Rote Mare sound like a bad band, which is the wrong impression to take from Serpents of The Church. This is a doom band with a future, they just perhaps shouldn’t try so hard because there’s plenty already here, trying to expand it with ill-fitting escapes doesn’t work.

Written by Andy Lye
More: 2011, Albums, Doom Metal, Quick.Play Reviews, Rote Mare