The Rotten Fruit of Mercy

While The Heritage of Past Gods took many risks in its radical take on the stale gothic/doom sound, Pik's second full-length release seems to have somewhat lost the slick balance of subgenres they had previously managed. While there were hints of thrash in the more technical passages on THoPG, Pik boldly took this direction while reducing the formerly prominent element of doom. It's quite telling that the better tracks on this album have the heavy glow of strange gloominess that pervaded their earlier material.

The most obviously unsuccessful change on this album is Henry Beck's change to a gruff though still clean vocal style. His limitations become most clear when opting for a thrash-styled, rapid-fire delivery, as displayed on the opener, "Scapegoat"; nonetheless a fairly decent song with its thundering double bass and creepy, campy touches of keyboard. I don't know if Beck suffered any physical issues which forced him into a more limited range, but, considering his brilliantly spirited performance on the previous album, Rotten Fruit certainly suffers for this change in vocal styling.

I think the other aspect that makes this an inferior release to earlier material is the decision to push the keyboards behind the competent yet largely uninspired guitar work. Usually the exact opposite tends to be the issue with doom-styled bands, but Pik's use of the keys were nothing like the usual weepy, My Dying Bride-inspired atmospherics which most keyboardists in this subgenre imitate. So what happens on Rotten Fruit is that, instead of the strangely haunting swells of synths as found on THoPG, the listener is bludgeoned with boring tremolo riff after boring tremolo riff with occasional diversions into doomier areas where the keys become more audible.

As if to redeem the album, the final track, "Don't Promise a Kingdom [I]t Doesn't Exist", actually works out a fairly successful balance of sheer metallic aggressiveness and delightfully campy keyboard-work. It's unfortunate that the listener has to wade through so much uninspired material to find, at last, a good example of where Pik were trying to exactly take their sound. After all, Beck, in spite of this apparent change in vocal styling, still displayed plenty of irreverent flair in this somewhat unsuccessful attempt to merge doom, thrash and even hints of power metal into a single dark and hostile expression.