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Impetuous Ritual: Relentless execution of ceremonial excrescence
08/11/10 || Khlysty
A few months ago, when I reviewed Portal’s “Outré” and “Swarth” GD forumer and former staffer Lumberjack pointed me towards Impetuous Ritual, an Aussie duo that sports two ex-members of Portal. Well, as I consider Lumby’s taste to be generally impeccable, I decided to give those guys a chance and, whaddyaknow? They were quite good in lotsa ways.
Of course, these guys being former members of the mindfuck that’s Portal, they obviously take a lot of cues from the cavernous, sickness-inducing, more-bizarre-than-bizarre approach on death metal of their former band. So in “Relentless execution of ceremonial excrescence” we gets to here all those convoluted, extremely user-unfriendly and chaotic “songs” that characterize Portal’s body of work. We gets the oozing guitars, the neither-here-nor-there drumming and the deep, completely incomprehensible vocals. You get this feeling of unholy terrors trying to break free of the songs’ fabric and enter the reality to create havoc and mayhem, much like what the Republicans are trying to do now at USA.
BUT, I can easily sense that the guys at Impetuous Ritual didn’t have in their hearts to go the whole hawg and become another version of Portal. Instead, the songs, serpentine and sick that they are, seem to retain more of a sense of form, to be a bit less chaotic than those of Portal. There are discernible riffs to be found in those songs, and a –small, yes, and feeble- sense of linear progression that makes them sound more easy to digest. Of course, if one thinks that this is in any sense “normal” death metal, one’s in for a nasty fucking surprise. I really don’t know what combination of effects and studio trickery the band employs, but the guitar sound is so sick that, as I’m listening to the record for the purpose of writing the review, I’ve already thrown up twice, due to the vertiginous effect it has on me.
The production is also guaranteed to make this as ugly as it gets, what with everything sounding cavernous and unstable. Any way, bottom line is that if one likes Portal, one would probably enjoy Impetuous Ritual just as much. As for the rest of the world, just a warning: if you like your death metal approachable and easily digestible, avoid those guys at all costs. This is as impenetrable, nasty and (yes, I repeat myself, okay, now bugger off…) sick as it gets. Only for fans of necrotic, oozing, cemetery-dirt-covered music.
- Information
- Released: 2009
- Label: Profound Lore
- Website: Impetuous Ritual MySpace
- Band
- Omenous Fugue: guitar, bass, vocals
- Ignis Fatuus: drums
- Tracklist
- 01. Elegy
- 02. Convoluting unto despondent anachronism
- 03. Coalescence of entropy
- 04. Ceremonial disembowelment
- 05. Destitution
- 06. Inexorable blasphemies
- 07. Unhallowed ascendance into impurity
- 08. Ritual of the crypt
- 09. Dirge
