Back in the early to mid-nineties, every heavy or thrash metal band that didn’t outright disband slowed down their music. Ever the idiosyncratic band, Kat decided to bypass groove metal into a sound not too dissimilar to doom metal on ‘…Róże Miłości Najchętniej Przyjmują Się Na Grobach’. While many of their peers lost their sting in the process, the slower compositions somehow managed to enhance the darkness that was always present in Kat’s music, creating an almost horror-like atmosphere throughout the album. By no means the most accessible album of its era, ‘…Róże Miłości Najchętniej Przyjmują Się Na Grobach’ might just be Kat’s creative peak.

Kat never truly fit a distinct subgenre tag, which was one of the things that made them interesting to begin with. But after leaning towards the darker side of NWOBHM on their debut album – think Venom with more melodic depth – thrash metal was close enough to justify. The interesting thing is that the style has not vanished from their sound completely here. Opening track ‘Odi Profanum Vulgus’ is an excellent upper mid-tempo thrasher, as is ‘Strzeż Się Plucia Pod Wiatr’, and many of the slower riffs could have been on a thrash album at a higher tempo.

Most of the material on ‘…Róże Miłości Najchętniej Przyjmują Się Na Grobach’ has a distinct Black Sabbath influence without sounding too much like them. ‘Płaszcz Skrytobójcy’, for instance, is carried by a massive doom metal riff, but Roman Kostrzewski’s voice adds a relentlessly evil atmosphere to the proceedings, while the fantastic use of space in the song is seldom heard in metal. The ten minute ‘Wierzę’ is another monolith of a doom track, but it is interspersed with propulsive, syncopated thrash sections and a lengthy haunting clean guitar section with the most beautiful guitar solo on the record.

Ultimately, that would be what best sums up Kat. They are a metal band, but not any ordinary metal band. And ‘…Róże Miłości Najchętniej Przyjmują Się Na Grobach’ is their least ordinary album to date. ‘Stworzyłem Piękną Rzecz’ is full of great mid-tempo thrash riffs, but Kostrzewski’s weird vocalizations and what can only be described as the ‘Smoke On The Water’ riff on a kazoo make it a particularly unconventional thrash song. ‘Purpurowe Gody’ finds the middle ground between a dark ballad and a stomping metal track and manages to make complete sense at that, while ‘Słody Krem’ builds from equally calm beginnings to a tumultuous, aggressive second half.

‘…Róże Miłości Najchętniej Przyjmują Się Na Grobach’ is not an easy album to grasp, but it managed to fascinate me more than any album Kat released before or since. It is a bold, daring album that acknowledges the changing trends in metal, but manages to bend them completely to the band’s will. Even the atmospheric nine minute instrumental outro ‘Szmaragd Bazyliszka’, which I initially thought was too long, fascinates me. It is rare that a metal album from the nineties sounds this creative and defiantly idiosyncratic, especially coming from a band that has been around since the late seventies, but that makes ‘…Róże Miłości Najchętniej Przyjmują Się Na Grobach’ all the more impressive as an artistic statement.

Recommended tracks: ‘Purpurowe Gody’, ‘Odi Profanum Vulgus’, ‘Wierzę’