Ritual Mass : " Cascading Misery"

This death metal band from Pittsburgh gets their debut album started off with a very dark sound being summoned, which is enough to get me to stick around and listen to more. The vocals roar out from a cavernous hole behind the other instrumentation. It is a barrage of riffs that pummels you. This is common with extreme music, for it to stun the listener, and it is not until the second song that they can ask if the band can actually write songs. Such is the situation here. The patter of double bass and guitar solos breaking through the din makes it clear they can at least play their instruments. 

The second song finds them picking up the speed to create something that feels like Incantation covering  Morbid Angel. There is a fiery chaos and a wrasthful outpouring of ill feelings, that lets me know they can not only write songs, but pour their wretched hearts into them. They allow things to ebb into a creepy place, the way the chords ring out as the song progresses. I would talk about their drummer being impressive, but that is just what comes with being able to play in a death metal band."Looming Shapeless" feels more like they are roaring into the void. When the guitar slows to enjoy the gloom, things work best here. 

The title track is back to being more of an attack to your eardrums, but one that is more deliberate and finds its groove. This is give na call and response with blasts of feral speed.  The vocals are just an obligatory layer. Things improve as a hookier riff empowers "Frozen Marrow". The album closes with the fourteen and a half "Disquiet". Sure, it's at a doomier pace, but does that warrant it being twice as long as any other song on this album? Three minutes in, things switch up to a more aggressive pace, which you would think might cut the overall time down.

Midway into the song, they ride a deliberate chug before dropping everything out to a more delicate guitar being toyed with. I think this is where they should have started the seventh song, but they just decided to keep it rolling a the sith song. There is a lot of fat that could be trimmed from this song. After almost four minutes of playing around they build it back up, while it sounds cool from a songwriting perspective, it's a little bloated. I'll give this album an 8.5 as it's overall impressive, and I enjoy that it's dark and sonically heavy. Being released September 5th  by 20 Buck Spin 

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