Musical Style and Ideology
According to Legacy journalist Christian Wachter, Root have, since their beginning, a very own style (although ostensibly Venom and Bathory-oriented) with an occult aura and are one of the few bands deserving the term "cult". Portuguese band Moonspell mentioned Root as one of their influences. Rock Hard journalist Björn Thorsten Jaschinski called them "occult metal pioneers". His colleague Wolf-Rüdiger Mühlmann located The Book "in the triangle of death metal, gothic metal and gloomy rock" with folklore melodies that could be interesting for fans of Katatonia, My Dying Bride, Primordial and Thine. On Root's homepage, Black Seal is described as a mixture of "the heaviness of 'Hell Symphony', monumentality of 'The Temple In The Underworld', mystery of 'Kargeras' and the dark charm of 'The Book'"; Mühlmann described it as a mix of Mercyful Fate, Moonspell, Anathema and old heavy metal. For Decibel journalist Chris D., Heritage of Satan "feels less complete than, say, The Book, which is, for me at least, the best Root album to date". The album features "a few rocking songs", Revenge of Hell and Legacy of Ancestors, as well as "more traditional black metal songs".
Big Boss founded the Czech branch of the Church of Satan. He still lives his life according to Satanism, but "gave away all agenda to younger ones" and now believes that "everything that smells of organization is shit". Although Root are therefore close to LaVeyan Satanism, Watain (whose vocalist Erik Danielsson contributed to Heritage of Satan), who are Devil worshippers, called them and Törr "the legendary kings of Czech Black/Death Metal" and "defenders of the faith" when they announced they would play on the Open Hell festival in 2004. According to Big Boss, "the difference between us and Scandinavian groups is that I sing about Satanic magic and myths I create personally, whereas Swedes, Norwegians etc. sing about things that are already known. They therefore have another approach to these topics." On Heritage of Satan, the topic is the final, successful assault of the infernal hordes onto the earth, after which Satan gives His power to His son.
Read more about this topic: Root (band)
Famous quotes containing the words musical, style and/or ideology:
“Fifty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong.”
—Anonymous. Popular saying.
Dating from World War I—when it was used by U.S. soldiers—or before, the saying was associated with nightclub hostess Texas Quinan in the 1920s. It was the title of a song recorded by Sophie Tucker in 1927, and of a Cole Porter musical in 1929.
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
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