originally written by Jim Brandon
It’s the cheap, gut-rotting whiskey that eats away at your stomach and scours your liver, or the scabby sex partner you’ll never, ever let yourself live down having unprotected intercourse with. Some things were just meant to remain in secrecy, untouched by the light of day, and bound to the deepest and most perverse recesses of your civilized mind, but some of us let these things consume us. We become the predator of innocents who lurks in back alleys waiting for the chance to horrendously scar someone for life in a myriad of penetrating ways, or we let the disagreement transcend words as fists fly of their own accord to impact soft flesh again, and again, until we can bludgeon no more. This is the calcified blade we use to dismember, and the furnace we use to incinerate the remains: this is Impetuous Ritual, and Relentless Execution Of Ceremonial Excrescence is their welcoming barbed-wire embrace towards a violent oblivion.
The corrosive death metal greeting these faceless Australians give us is not gentle, nor is it ironic in any fathomable way whatsoever. As my fellow scribe Michael Wuensch so aptly put it, this album is the latest in a slew of Profound Lore releases that makes your skin feel like it’s going to combust. If you think Portal (whom they share members with), Admiral Angry, or De Magia Veterum are harsh, and admittedly they definitely are, none of them, not even Portal, are as vague and inaccessible as Impetuous Ritual. An audience for this band will be scant, I guarantee it, and with very good reason. They’ve replaced the blasting snare with an iron hammer and chisel which splits the back of your skull, the guitars are the saws that grind right through bone, and the narrator can only breathe and speak when assisted by a rusted device. Of course, they’re not entirely in a league of their own as far as pushing the envelope of what the human ear can withstand. Their jackhammer death metal style is obviously heavily inspired by Portal, Immolation, and traces of very old Deicide, and I wouldn’t even call this the most over-the-top release of this year, but there’s something very parasitic and itchy about their vibe, so you might find yourself making strange faces as it’s playing.
There’s no doubt in my mind that whatever audience they do manage to amass will absolutely love this album, but what I hear in it is something very different from what I’m used to when it comes to death metal. About five months ago, a friend turned me on to a ‘zine which featured nothing but industrial music. One thing led to another, and after seeking vast samples of these new, unheard-of bands that sounded nothing at all like what I’ve known industrial to be, I wondered what would happen if a death metal band somehow encapsulated that same vibe of utter inhumanity, and lo and behold, it appears I’ve found them. Forget The Berzerker, this sounds like ugly robots, truly intimidating machines, playing death metal. Although Hollywood has done a good job at screwing the pooch when it comes to machines taking over the world, the concept itself is still rather frightening, and when applied to the actual sound of music, those abrupt solos and sudden bleak falsettos that break through the whirring tremolo calamity cause a nicely jarring effect. It simply does not sound like human beings composed or performed this in a studio, but not all of it is really unique, as “Ritual Of The Crypt” is quite straightforward and plainly laid out in comparison to the rest of the disc, sounding like a ridiculously intoxicated and perturbed Morbid Angel.
With many upsides to this album, the downside is that the band is, at this point, merely running roughshod over your ears with atmosphere. The songwriting they vomit forth doesn’t leave much more than a resinous residue on your lungs, and the riffs that permanently imbed themselves into your psyche are sadly low in number. It would be advisable to listen to this with no other distractions, and repeatedly over the course of a week or two in order to finally absorb what’s going on, and at times it can be a little too much to bear. There is reason, but not a lot of rhyme, so I can see why many people would miss the point overall, because even I can’t quite figure it out after more listens than I can count. There’s more of a preoccupation with bringing you into the cavern with no real plan as to what to do once you’re in there, so a little more focus towards making music that bears down once it has you in its grasp wouldn’t be too much of a sacrifice as far as overdrive is concerned.
Impetuous Ritual haven’t reinvented anything, but they sure have thoroughly fucked it over. Considering this is even less songwriting-based than Swarth, or Migdal Bavel, you’re really not going to be able to look back on this year and find too many other albums that effortlessly bat Relentless Execution…off to the side when it comes to taking chances. But I’ll tell you , this is one of the most unsafe and uncaring debuts I’ve ever heard, and if they can somehow grow to match the dread of “Dirge,” “Inexorable Blasphemies,” or “Coalescence of Entropy” on future releases with equally potent songwriting (and a better mix, at least), then I think they could be more than capable of living up to the buzz they’ve already attained. A bloody good time, and damn if it doesn’t make you feel scummy afterwards, but I don’t mind a bit.
