His mind sundered by unimaginable horrors, Richard Benton’s psyche shatters into twenty pieces, each trapped in its own maze of nightmares more surreal than the last…
Tag Archives: Impetuous Ritual
Pallbearer, Portal, Full Of Hell, Loss, Krieg, And More To Release New Albums Via Profound Lore Records In 2017
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In a post to Facebook, Profound Lore, one of the premier record labels for underground music have announced their partial release plan for 2017. In addition to the already announced Pallbearer and Krieg albums, the label plans to release many notable and cult bands albums in the new year!
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Abyssal – Antikatastaseis
In every musical movement, the leaders are the ones who bring their own twist, their own innovation, to the collective sound. Since Portal’s cross-over from novelty clock-head band to serious underground phenomenon, the number of bands following them into abstract Noise-damaged eldritch Death Metal have steadily increased until it constitutes a genuine – if deeply underground – trend. We’re still at the point where even the orthodox followers can still deliver a genuine impact, but the big hitters are already identifiable as the ones with their own distinctive contribution to the formula; Portal, of course, with their ferocious creativity and nightmarish song structures; Aevangelist with their super-dense wall of Noise overload and Impetuous Ritual with their underpants. With their let’s-have-fun-with-syllables third album Antikatastaseis (Profound Lore), British one-piece Abyssal step firmly up to join the top tier.
Having mastered their thick, oppressive brand of Murky Death Metal over two previous albums, Abyssal’s grand bid for innovation here is to mix it up with a hefty dose of what I’ll grudgingly call “post-rock” – the expansive, contemplative sound-scaping (another grudgingly used term) that’s been an increasing part of Metal’s musical landscape since Neurosis. On paper it sounds hackneyed and forced, and the first listen may not do much to dispel that impression – the more post-heavy passages sound surprisingly conventional, almost twee, to ears prepared for eldritch cacophony, and the transition between them and the more typically murky passages seem a little abrupt – but give it time and it develops into something genuinely distinctive and unsettling.
The key to Antikatastaseis’ success is probably that Abyssal haven’t softened the attack of their Death Metal elements in any way – they’re still as cavernous and oppressive as anything on Novit Enim Dominus… (Independent) – but they have put them in a different context. Whirlwinds of chaotic Death Metal are dragged and distorted into unexpected, atmospheric shapes that would almost be beautiful if they weren’t so ugly. Passages of genuine harmony collapse into sudden, jarring violence, or fade into chilling ambient drones. At times the effect calls to mind Black Metal bands like Fen or Winterfylleth, but with their bucolic pastoralism replaced with nightmarish horror. This isn’t Portal-lite – though it may have the potential to cross over to a wider audience than some of their peers – it’s the work of a band who are putting their inspirations into a new and distinctive form, just like all innovators.
The temptation to make a joke about Antikatastaseis being as hard to listen to as it is to say is pretty hard to resist, but they deserve better. It’s also not true – once you’ve adjusted to the combination of elements, it’s a surprisingly intuitive and engaging sound that develops with each listen. Whatever you think of the current state of spooky abstract Death Metal, Abyssal have simultaneously appointed themselves to the top tiers of the scene, and created an album with the potential to draw in fans from outside it.
9.0/10
Abyssal. Too kvlt for Social Media.
RICHIE HR
Portal – Impetuous Ritual – Grave Miasma: Live At Nambucca, London, UK
It can be difficult with music as inherently niche as Extreme Metal to really know just how “big” a particular band are. From safely inside our little bubble Portal seem absolutely enormous at the moment, a regular feature on End Of Year lists whenever they put an album out. This impression was supported by their performance the day before at Bristol’s Temples Festival, where pretty much everyone present tried to ram themselves into the second stage area to see one of the weekend’s most talked-about bands. Taken out of that context and into the unforgiving reality of a rainy London Sunday, then it’s almost surprising to see them in a tiny pub filled with ferociously dedicated fans. Don’t take talk of “hipsters” seriously – this is music entirely confident in its own small but passionate niche.
Grave Miasma have made a name for themselves playing solid, no-nonsense old-school Death Metal with a dark, “gothic” atmosphere and a pre-frilly-shirts Peaceville feel, and tonight they demonstrate that it is the strength of their song-writing and the confidence of their playing that elevates them beyond the generic. Further proof that playing within a genre does not necessarily equate to a lack of ambition or skill.
Atmosphere, though, is a fragile thing. Without Temples’ smoke machine and elaborate lighting rig, Impetuous Ritual seem less like four eldritch spectres of doom, and more like four guys in their pants and as many nails as they could afford from B&Q. Live, their music is much more savage and bestial than on record, the abstract atmosphere distilled down to pure aggression and violence. It’s a powerful performance, but a little repetitive, and loses some power towards the end of their set – although perhaps that’s simply because expectation for Portal has reached frantic levels.
Impetuous Ritual’s underpants-atmospherics suffer slightly from their mundane environment, but Portal are on a different level entirely – beyond anything as crude as geography. Even seeing The Curator having to push through the crowd in full costume to get to the stage (or watching him be guided on and off the Temples stage the day before) doesn’t detract from the sheer presence they exude once their set starts. Metal is not a genre renowned for its subtlety, but there’s something understated about Portal’s stage craft that’s far more effective than the usual ranting and shouting. The Curator’s deliberate, ritualistic gestures carry a weight beyond the usual air-punching and head-banging, and stage banter is replaced entirely with hypnotic waves of noise which link all of the songs together, so that there isn’t a moment of silence once they take the stage.
All this, though, would be ultimately meaningless if their aesthetics weren’t so perfectly married to their music. Critics attacking them for not having catchy riffs or grooves, or accusing them of being “just noise”, are missing the point – which is that Portal’s uniqueness comes from blending the musical elements of Death Metal with an approach to “song-writing” more akin to Dark Ambient or Noise music. This is particularly noticeable live, where waves of feedback, noise and dissonance flow together in a way which seems almost spontaneously organic – but which is of course planned in great detail. This isn’t catchy Melodic Death Metal, dirty Old School Death Metal or even ten-billion-riffs-at-once Tech Death Metal – this is Death Metal as fully immersive Noise, and live – even to people familiar with their recorded material – the intensity is almost unbearable.
If there’s a single criticism of Portal’s set, it’s how inappropriate some of the fans’ reactions seemed. A horribly arrogant thing to say, of course, and the idea that there’s a “right” or “wrong” way of enjoying a band should be treated with nothing but contempt, but when confronted with something as alien and distinctive as Portal, the old whoo-ing, punching the air and shouting the band name as if they were Slayer just sounds out of place. The only sane reaction to being confronted with this spectacle is just to stand there and take it for long as you possibly can.
RICHIE HR
Impetuous Ritual – Unholy Congregation Of Hypocritical Ambivalence
Even in underground terms, Ignis Fatuus is hardly a recognisable name, but as drummer for Portal, Grave Upheaval and Impetuous Ritual, the black-hooded Australian is at the cutting edge of Death Metal’s abstract progression into something closer to Noise and Dark Ambient. 2013 was the year when that style – finally picking up the baton of discordance laid down by Gorguts in the late 90’s – exploded, with Portal’s Vexovoid among its most exciting releases.
On first listen, Impetuous Ritual are by far the most “normal” of the Fatuus hat-trick, with recognisable riffs and a surging, chaotic Black/Death Metal approach that owes more than a little to bands like Blasphemy and Diocletian. After Portal’s deceptively eloquent Noise-as-Art abstractions and Grave Upheaval’s transformation of death metal into utterly monolithic, lightless ambient soundscapes, IR’s second album almost seems a let-down – generic noisy Death Metal that we’ve heard before. Perseverance, however, is rewarded, and Impetuous Ritual are revealed not merely as a half-way point between their more obvious siblings, but as a band equally worthy in their own right.
What raises Unholy Congregation… (Profound Lore) beyond the generic clatter-clatter-bang is the structure of the album, which leads the listener from relatively conventional chaotic Death Metal into tracks that combine the abstract, distorted qualities of Fatuus’ other bands with the destructive fury of Antediluvian. The first three tracks rips through a powerful but familiar swamp of riffs and blasts before Despair splits itself into a more atmospheric – even ambient – piece reminiscent of the last Grave Upheaval album, and from there the album opens into something much stranger and more diverse, yet always feels like a consistent, complete album.
People who find this style of cavernous, eldritch Death Metal too chaotic and lacking in melody are still not going to be happy with Unholy Congregation…, but this is a master-class in how to make Death Metal which embraces the more abstract side of the genre without losing sight of its riff-based roots, and prove that Transdimensional Ancient Squid Death Metal isn’t a dead trend yet.
9/10
RICHARD HR