I can not hide that "Sleep of the Angels" has a lot of enemies. The album sold a lot still, but we had lost our reputation as a band. It was an era that I was passing back then and I think that every artist has this right to do that. Yes, I did experience a couple of things, but I didn't experiment with "clean" vocals. But maybe some murmurs sounded like clean vocals...
Sakis Tolis / Rotting Christ interview, Metal Command, 2009
ROTTING CHRIST released their fifth album on this day in 1999.
...Sleep of the Angels was a lot calmer and catchier. You either love that one, or you hate it.
Sakis Tolis / Rotting Christ interview, Hellbound, 2010
The cover artwork was painted by Stephen Kasner, who also designed covers for INTEGRITY, SUNNO))) and others. Kasner died recently, on the 25th of December. Be sure to look back at his excellent work!
...before I was able to harness and control things through therapies, I lived in a perpetual state of crippling anxiety, panic, fevers, immobilizing pain, and ultimately, complete and total nervous breakdown. Naturally, all the doctors I was seeing early on to try to diagnose and manipulate the situation focused on two main approaches - surgery and drugs. Considering surgery to be an absolute last resort, we followed a path of everything from pain to antidepressants to anxiety medications; you name it. After a while and under these extreme conditions, you begin to self-medicate. Realizing that the only way to regain any semblance of life was to be able to work again and, in this moment of clarity, completely rejected all medications, prescribed or otherwise. In some sense, it becomes a simpler thought process of, 'If nature dictates depression, pain, and chaos within me, I must analyze and understand why, and figure out how to make these anomalies work for me, and even enhance life, if that's possible.
Stephen Kasner interview, Clevescene, 2017