Rotting Serpent (1997-2018)

("Official" RS logo)

I suppose the best place to start is with Rotting Serpent.

Rotting Serpent began with a dream, back in 1999 or therabouts. In this dream, I was rummaging through a discount bin of cassettes in some music store, and two casettes I looked at were "Infernity" (i.e., 'Infernal Eternity'), and "Rotting Serpent." The Rotting Serpent cover art was similar to Pantera's "Great Southern Trendkill," which I remember finding odd. I awoke with a sense that I should use one of these names for my music.

Up to that time, I had trouble finding one 'band name' under which to organize my music. If only I had known that, in the future, this conundrum would later blossom forth as a spurting chaos, birthing multiple projects in the process.
Rotting Serpent, as a name, wasn't used until 2003. Prior to that time (between 2001-2002), I had gradually organized all my music under the same Satan's Troops, and before that, I had toyed with several other names as well (Broken Open, Once Dead, Butchered, etc.).

While there is a certain bit of musical dovetailing early on, between Satan's Troops, and Rotting Serpent, there is hardly anything extant from the Satan's Troops days. Aside from two songs ("Marching on to Victory," and "Alive in the Forest of Death," both appearing on the Rotting Serpent album "Spirits of the Unblack"), all of the old Satan's Troops material was either lost or destroyed, to the best of my knowledge...
Even so, there is a big similarity with earlier, mostly acoustic, RS material, and the sound of Satan's Troops; it is possible to see that the one came from the other, and vice-versa.

From 2003 onward, Rotting Serpent was a Christian project. While neither Christianity, nor Christian Metal, was anything new to me (having grown up with both), the "Unblack" scene was still fresh to me. Somewhat naïvely, I fashioned the RS logo after Rotting Christ's logo, not thinking at the time about the cringey trend of Christian Metal bands to offer "Christian versions" of various secular bands. Back in earlier days though, I suppose this was seen as 'cool' somehow, and was looked at with less scrutiny than today (where it just seems kitschy).
This version of the logo would be the one used in 2012, before settling (for the most part) on the logo pictured above, late 2012-early 2013. Other logos are sometimes used, but the logo (at top of page) is probably the closest to an 'official' logo that there is.

The last two RS albums became increasingly ambiguous, with regard to spiritual focus, as I began studying different things.

 

(Drawings from 2003, logo sketches) 

The Rotting Serpent bandcamp has music spanning from 1997-2018 at time of writing. Even though RS technically only began as a project of its own in 2003, I have added music to its back catalogue that was either a precursor to Satan's Troops, or running semi-concurrently with it.

(Alternate logo from 2018 and modified 2020, possibly for future album(s)?)

All albums at 'Name Your Price' (free or donation):

https://rottingserpent.bandcamp.com/


Mediafire links: 

"Original Keyboard Recordings '97"

"Disenchant" (2000)

"Spirits of the Unblack" (2004)

RS - "Seduced by the Ghosts of Rotting Serpents (Death of Antichrist)" (Mediafire)

"Unblack Metal Ist Krieg" 

"Raping the Grave"

"In the Dead of Winter"

"Listen to the Donkey"

"The Last Noel"

"Solstice of Failed Prophecy"