RITUAL MASS - CASCADING MISERY LP

Includes Bandcamp DL code sent via email after checkout. The debut full length album from Pittsburgh’s Ritual Mass is more than a collection of songs, it’s a series of calculated assaults on the virtue of the holy. Evolving beyond earlier EP and demo releases, ‘Cascading Misery’, encapsulates the bludgeoning infliction of pain and the slow peel of skin by flame, rife with both sonic chaos and extinguished hope. From the outset of album opener ‘Obsidian Mirror’ the atmosphere is oppressive, thick with a suffocating malaise. There is a sense of something ceremonial at work but not in a way that seeks communion. Rather it’s ordeal as sacrament. Riffs strangle and churn into convulsive submission, oscillating from slow agony to psychotic break, over which a guttural lament so savage it freezes the blood is wrenched through dungeon stone. Each track unfolds like time spent in isolation, bound by chains, the mind slowly unraveling and surrounded by memories of torment both real and imagined.