Ah, lovely. As refreshing as a good kick to the shins from somewhere round Copenhagen way come’s the four guys that make up Anti Ritual. Blessed with the kind of chops that you suspect only come from being around a while, this mob delve elbow deep into that morass that is a curdled mix of hardcore punk, crust, sludge, black and death metal; basically a bit noisy and a bit pissed off from what I can make out of the lyrics. To say the least. What you get is just over a quarter of an hour of driving and driven hardcore always dancing on the edge of a black metal style riff with a bit of death and sludge lower down the gears. There are times when I’m reminded of Anaal Nathrakh at their most feral but with a completely different atmosphere, and of course a little of At The Gates. So pretty darned full on.
Despite preferring the upper gears there is a good amount of variation here: The bass blowing out on opener and personal favourite ‘Ideals To The Fire’ ushers in a wartorn Bolt Thrower aspect with much more hardcore overtones, an attack similar to Selfless or Unkind in ‘No Second Earth’ but with that black metal style melody-in-the-racket likening beneath. They do the perfect breakdown without skipping a beat and then rise up with more of the rapid and rabid musical body blows.
I know there’s a lot of this ‘no genre boundaries ‘ hardcore around in Europe and Scandinavia at the moment but Anti Ritual still clear out the cobwebs in fine, direct style and there’s a lot to be said for that particularly in this EP length dose of protest driven aggro.
A pretty darned good kicking, really. Just wish this had come with a full lyric sheet as they really seem to have a lot of intelligent, sharp things to say too.
(7.5/10 Gizmo)
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