2002-10-23
In recent interviews conducted with the band, Rakoth’ s members has presented a decisive claim of carelessness towards criticism of their music. According to the Russian trio, they choose their musical path according to their personal taste, without regarding any commercial considerations, always remaining true to their musical principles.
In my opinion, such a cry is rather commercial itself: by taking such a harsh, disregarding approach towards critics, and bothering to sharply pronounce and emphasize it on several different occasions, the bands aims a clear and carefuly articulated message for fans of alledgedly-offstream music to buy the album. Do you not think that by blatantly degrading critisicm, instead of trying to explore, anazlyze and assimilate given recommendations for improvement and progression purposes, is actually not much more than a demonstrable gimmick of capturing attention, as well as vaccinating the listener’s possibly-negating opinion regarding the quality of their album?Personally, I believe this also reminds a certain children’s proverb.
And alas, this time I will have to be the one who publicly descries the nudity of the king. Rakoth’s creation is indeed not the usual Metal album. Still, nowadays we can luckily yet afford to pick our accompanying musical enviroment not only according to measures of renewal and uniqueness in the genre aspect, but mostly due to actual interesting and innovative essential artistic concept. On this level, there is obviously much improvement to be made in the works of Rakoth.
Rakoth play a blend of rather varied Metal genres. Their output consists of segments of Doom, Death and Black Metal, with often Folk (emphasized by a dominant flute taking part in some of the compsitions) , Gothic and Epic tints. Rakoth is not easily comperable to any other specific band; this appears to be their main source of pride. The problem arises when one seeks a proper reason to occupy himself by listening to this creation, among the vast plethora of available artistic exhibits. This, I am simply not able to find: although issuing a rather original sound, it is by no means captivating or binding; not every new element necessarily is. Moreover, the compositions are usually uninteresting and dull, not integrating to any noticable superior coherence. Usually, proper albums implementing varied musical styles gain their justification by crystalizing the different approaches around a certain unifying concept, rendering the unity to hold a certain idealistic meaning. Although at times featuring segmental interesting musical ideas, this comprehensive merit simply doesn’t exist on Rakoth’s creation; I suppose that basing their music on vague Tolkien-inspired themes doesn’t help much on that matter.
Still, there clearly is hope for Rakoth: although emphasizing it in quite an infantile manner, they do have the bravity to issue an unusual, different, offstream output. Plus, they obviously feature an occasional shard of musical excellence. Perhaps, if they take a different, mature approach on the making of their next album, learn to relate properly to reviews and criticism by utilizing the best of them, and, more important - focus on a given, defined concept in order to centralize their multitude of musical ideas to the shape of one organic system, they might be apt for future greatness.
Tom Orgad
