Some live albums document a night. This one documents a lifetime.
Recorded at the historic Lycabettus Theatre in Athens, ’35 Years Of Evil Existence’ is not just Rotting Christ playing songs for a hometown crowd; it is a ceremonial summoning of their entire past, laid bare in sound, sweat, and memory. Every era of the band is present, not as fragmented nostalgia, but as chapters in one continuous dark scripture.
What immediately separates this from ordinary live releases is its narrative weight. The setlist is built like a pilgrimage through their evolution: from the raw blasphemy of the early years, through the melodic Hellenic awakening, and into the modern ritualistic grandeur that defines Rotting Christ today. This is not a greatest-hits package: it is a sonic autobiography.
Early tracks like ‘Forest Of N’gai’ and ‘Fgmenth, Thy Gift’ still carry their primitive venom, but they now sound less like youthful rebellion and more like foundational incantations. Sakis Tolis doesn’t scream them; he invokes them, backed by a crowd that knows these songs are part of Black Metal history. They are no longer just tracks from demos and early albums; they are heritage. Also featuring my favourite song from Thou Art Lord’s ‘Societas Satanas’ (which is actually Sakis’s other band).
The mid-era material: songs like ‘Among Two Storms’ and ‘After Dark I Feel’: shows how Rotting Christ diverged from cold Scandinavian orthodoxy and forged the Hellenic Black Metal identity: melodic, tragic, and deeply spiritual. These pieces bring emotional depth into the set, proving that the band was never just about darkness, but about transformation through darkness.
Then the modern era takes over, and this is where the live album becomes almost overwhelming. Tracks like ‘Kata Ton Demona Eaytoy’, ‘The Raven’, and ‘Dies Irae’ turn Lycabettus into a ritual ground. Greek chants echo off ancient stone, the crowd becomes part of the liturgy, and Rotting Christ no longer feel like a band performing; they feel like priests conducting a black mass of their own legacy.
Unlike many veteran Extreme Metal bands who treat their later years as an epilogue, Rotting Christ treats every phase as equally valid. There is no hierarchy here: no “golden era” worshipped above the rest. Everything connects. Everything matters. The raw, the melodic, and the ceremonial coexist as parts of the same evolving beast.
The production captures this perfectly. The sound is powerful but not sterilized; the audience remains present, reminding you that this is not just being listened to, it is being lived. You can hear decades of devotion in every chant, every roar back at the stage.
Where a band like Rotting Christ represents Black Metal as eternal flame, Rotting Christ represents it as eternal metamorphosis. This live album does not try to freeze the band in time; it shows how they survived, adapted, and deepened without losing their core.
In the end, ’35 Years Of Evil Existence’ stands as more than a live release. It is a monument, carved from sound, celebrating one of Black Metal’s most enduring and culturally distinct legacies.
This is what it sounds like when a band does not just endure for 35 years: it ascends through them. Indeed they are true pioneers of the Hellenic Black Metal scene.
