Atriarch- Ritual Of Passing LP (Sale price!)

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SKU: seventhrr033.ebu

Band/Title: Atriarch

Label: Seventh Rule

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Price: $12.99

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I honestly do think there is a good amount of originality in modern metal, mainly from more underground based artists. Originality is coming from none metal influence since you can only recycle so much doom metal, death metal, black metal, etc. Atriarch is doing something which I haven't heard much in metal which is being influenced by the more dissonant and darker side of punk and goth music. Gothic metal has been around for over twenty years, though I rarely hear the ugly and more sinister side of their gothic influences, such as death rock. I believe Atriarch sounds a bit more influenced by Christian Death and Swans than Celtic Frost and Saint Vitus, though the riffs in Ritual of Passing sound like a bastardization of those bands.

Rituals of Passing is very blackened and sludge-soaked. Blackened from the cold atmosphere and guitar shrills, also from the shrills of the vocalist Lenny Smith. Guttural grows and shrieks are mainly used in extreme metal which tend to not have much emotion, though that's not the case at all with Smith. Smith sounds like a psychotic Rozz Williams (ex- Christian Death vocalist) than the typical guttural growls from extreme doom metal vocalists. The music is "sludge-soaked" from the thicker than tar sound of the guitars, which also have the atmospheric sludge dirge of early Godflesh. The album's atmospheric influences makes it flow very well and every song flows incredibly well to the next. It starts out very strong and loud and ends with a haunting outro, which has a passage from the Upanishads, a translation from the Ojibwa Tribe. Not to mention the production is pretty much perfect for this album. It's very raw, though not enough to sound like a demo (like a bit above bands like Ramesses and Stabat Mater), plus it helps makes the music sound more real and organic, not fake and digital.

Anyway, I would like to rate this album higher, though I feel it is rather rushed, especially from taking the song Offerings from their split with Alaric earlier this year. I prefer the split version more since it's longer and produced a bit better and they might as well have featured their other song on the split, Oblivion. The only physical format of the split is on vinyl, though it's available digitally through 20 Buck Spin's bandcamp and everywhere from Amazon's digital store to iTunes. I think it's kind of cheap that they used a song from the split while they could have waited longer to release the album because it's only been a little over a year since they released their debut album. Not to mention the songs Altars and Prayer are mixed up so maybe they'll fix that on the vinyl version. I'm sure these guys have more song ideas down, so they could have waited until next year to release this album with another song or two.

Other than that complaint, I think this is a wicked album and these guys are a very talented group, so I hope for future albums