Impetuous Ritual Relentless Execution of Ceremonial Excrescence

Genre:Death MetalFormat:CDTracks:9 Label:Profound Lore RecordsYear:2009

By now, you’re already familiar with Portal. It’s that Australian death metal act whose music is so torturous and esoteric that it has divided metal fans into the most extreme love/hate categories since Gorguts‘ Obscura album. There are those who think Portal is nothing more than obtuse, meandering riffs for the sake of noise; then there are those who think that there is most definitely a genius, sinister structure in their music, with horrific purpose to their compositions, enjoyable to those with similarly fucked-up dispositions. If you’ve read my masturbatory rants on Portal’s past output, you know I’m firmly entrenched in the latter category.

It seems the past year has been pretty good to the Portal gang. In addition to finishing a brand new album (on a timely schedule at that!), some of the blokes from the band found time to found a side-project. What is this side-project you ask? Well, none other than the band I’m reviewing right now: Impetuous Ritual!

The musical aim of Impetuous Ritual on this debut album can aptly be described as this: an attempt to merge together the martial sounds of Bestial Warlust and Incantation, while filtering it through a light haze of Portal’s trademark disjointed insanity.

Relentless Execution of Ceremonial Excrescence opens with a broodingly slow, crawling piece that drags its mass along in a most terrifying manner, where it torments the listener through rumbling guitars and dreary drums, until it explodes into the second track, which is a full of chaotic, pounding Bestial Warlust worship. Throughout the album, Impetuous Ritual alternates between these moments of brooding doom-like dirges and chaotic war metal battles, supported by vocal emissions that sound like a razorback boar being gutted with a jackhammer.

And every so often, Impetuous Ritual’s progenitor slowly rears its head into the chaos There are tiny but noticeable pieces of Portal’s abstract and convoluted song structures scattered throughout Relentless Execution of Ceremonial Excrescence. But keep in mind, this is not Portal. The record, while echoing Portal’s heritage, has more in common with bands like Cemetery Urn and Bestial Warlust. That being said, however, all things Portal’s detractors hate are on here, too; so if you’re one of the unwashed fools that cannot appreciate the blunt insanity of Portal’s immense sound, you probably won’t be able to appreciate Relentless Execution of Ceremonial Excrescence, either.

Relentless Execution of Ceremonial Excrescence is a more than solid introduction for Impetuous Ritual into the metal world. It’s sick, cacophonous, deranged, and as impenetrable as a cursed and damned Trojan city being burned to the ground by its own rabid, disease-addled, possessed, and cannibalistic citizens. But for those of us who like our metal secretive, bizarre, and down right brutal, Relentless Execution of Ceremonial Excrescence is a welcome addition to the music library.

Order Online:
Profound Lore Records (CD)
Amazon (CD)
Amazon (MP3)

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