The Ancient Ritual of Death

Beast Of Revelation is a brand new project featuring members from a plethora of well-know bands. They dropped their debut record on Iron Bonehead Productions, so it’s time for me to get stuck into some punishing death-doom from a trio of killer musicians.

Droning, crusty guitars and gruesome growls come in with a chiming bell, setting a morbid, drudging and intense sound as drums slowly pummel into the mix. Eerily creeping along with macabre, doomy riffs, Beast Of Revelation are playing the slow game, building to something devastating with monstrously heavy songwriting that really gets under your skin. The guttural vocals are perfectly suited to the monotonously gloomy instrumentals, really hitting the low frequencies with force. This is some ludicrously heavy material, that can be said from pretty early on.

The record continues to march through charnel layers of dreary and bleak death metal brilliance with a storming blend of crushing instrumentation and killer vocal work that warps into some more discordant, unsettling grooves and mysterious territories. Obliterating mid-tempo crawls soon kick in some more stomping destruction that builds slowly but incredibly well into some ferociously intense and marvellous soundscapes of pure death-doom ecstasy. There is a primitive charm to this material which somehow manages to stay away from obnoxious and unnecessary progressions while definitely not feeling dull or lacking.

Fantastically creepy, haunting and magnificently well-written, this hypnotically minimalistic style is utilised in a manner that sounds utterly huge, with a monolithic production to deliver the vacuous bellows from purely decimating instrumental and vocal debauchery that drags out a gruellingly dark cacophony of blissfully brutal material. Slowly ebbing away at you with their morbidly crawling hooks and anguish inducing sonic tribulations, this is some blasphemously intense music on their debut record which is a superb start to hopefully more mortuary-shaking material.

A grave-rupturing slab of totally wonderful death-doom that harkens back to the Finnish death metal of the 90s with epic doom metal soaring into the structures of the riffs. With apparent influences conjured from Triptykon to Black Sabbath to Funebre, there is definitely a wide range of diverse sounds that work together astonishingly well on this record. Cohesive in execution, the amalgamation of so many sounds is delivered with gorgeously tight musical prowess that hits hard and draws out into a stunningly ambient piece of memorably glorious work that pounds, soars and growls with delightfully eerie death metal excellence.

Truly a mesmerising debut that will certainly win the stone hearts of death-doom lovers who prefer the classic approach to the sound without any obnoxious or unneeded diversions from the morbid hypnosis incurred from slow, drudging and monstrously heavy music.

Written for www.nattskog.wordpress.com

First thing that attracted me to give it a try to Beast of Revelation and their day view album “The Ancient Ritual of Death” was the fact that the mighty John McEntee from the quintessential monstrosity of death metal called Incantation was spewing his vocals for this project. I was curious of what to find and my expectations were high, it could be an underground jewel, an entertained recording or total crap, as simple as that.

This band hails from The Netherlands and I think because of that fact, it is just a side project that features the vocals of Mr. McEntee. In general, we can find a death/doom approach that takes its time to build in the songs and it seems that never reaches a pinnacle of brutality. For I can tell, the music of this band depicts some landscapes of anguish and desperation. Talking about desperation, I think it was the first feeling that appeared during the several listens that I gave to this recording. You got to be very patient and wait for the good stuff to pop up in very few moments. I think that by the fourth song called “The fallen Ones”, I started to find some taste in this bland approach. The self-title track also offers some interesting guitar passages but nothing that blew my mind. You can find a couple of interesting growls and screams here and there as well as catchy riffs but in general it is kind of dull and takes time to develop ideas that seemed unfinished.

Most of the times when you listen to a death/doom band you come to feel oppression provided by the crushing atmosphere and be engulfed by suffocating landscapes but not the case here, sorry, I have to said it. Instead, you will find boring and average pieces that lack catchy hooks that only offer loop after loop of the same riffs and drum patterns. I consider that McEntee´s collaboration was kind of a commercial strategy no more than that, the band doesn´t have what death/doom is all about. Death/doom metal is not just about slowing down to the point of tedious; it is about creating an atmosphere of decrepit landscapes and Beats of Revelations fails in this attempt. The album is not total crap but is pretty close to it, McEntee´s vocals save the day but not quite. It is also interesting to hear him out of his main and side projects but I think that his voice does not fit into the concept quite smoothly, he sounds forced and out of his more aggressive and cavernous register. The are several times in which this band tries to reference the sound of Hooded Menace; For instance, the song “The Unholy Roman Empires”. However, it lacks the skillfully musicianship to hit the right notes and sound monolithically destructive.

All in all, Beast of Revelation just barely manages to sound entertained, I found it useful as background noise that you can listen while you do other shit like work on your computer. Even though I listened the album several times I don´t have many recollections of specific songs or riffs or memorable passages. Being the first effort from this band I can give them the benefit of doubt and maybe there will be room for improvement in the future. Nonetheless, I have to say that I did not find “The Ancient Ritual of Death” interesting or impressive; there is a long way to achieve the punch they need to impress the listener and create the right kind of aura.

Beast Of Revelation are a band from the Netherlands that stood out to me just from the recommendations under the doom/death tag. They’re composed of members primarily from other groups, including Incantation and Mortician, so there’s obviously some kind of classic appeal. But I’ll admit, I was let down after giving this a few listens. The band’s debut record The Ancient Ritual Of Death starts out solid enough but gradually sinks.

Not to say that everything is outright bad, as a strong riff foundation is laid down hard at the beginning, getting my hopes up. The problem is that it never really pushes itself any further for forty-three-minute run-time, and after a while becomes hollow. Even early on, “The Great Tribulation” gets too heavy-handed with the chugs sounding too monotonous, and the aimless shrieks here are very unnecessary. The less straightforward songs that are longer in length do that even more, which are less enjoyable. “The Days Of Vengeance” cakes these on the most, and it’s upsetting that this one sign of variance isn’t exactly pleasant.

The vocals, in general, work against the band, as they follow the same issues as the riffing. There’s little to no variance, and although doom/death isn’t something that’s really meant to have melody, there has to be some sort of life. Most of it is gurgly growls that can’t even be distinguished from one another, showing very brightly in “The Fallen Ones.” This is a longer tune that goes even further with the same uninspired chugging, and vocals that just ramble on without even a hint of threat.

Considering the lineup, I was shocked at how underwhelming The Ancient Ritual Of Death was. Though this isn’t criminal status, I can’t say that I find anything worthwhile save for a solid foundation. Even the “Beast VI” interlude did nothing out of place from anything else, so I can’t say I recommend it. But, doom/death seekers should at least quench their curiosity thirst, as everything is subjective. As for me, I’m going to stick to Solothus and Spectral Voice. At least the artwork is pretty cool?

Originally written for Indy Metal Vault

If death/doom is at its heart about mourning, Beast of Revelation are dealing with the kind of grief that leads to madness. It is the anguish of being left to die in a crevasse, or of bleeding out from a mortal wound at the fringes of the battlefield, screaming and raging at the horrifying brevity of the life that’s left to you. There’s nothing pretty here. No head hung in sepia-toned depression. No comforting oblivion or morphemic haze. No redemptive suffering. Just bleak, dark, doom.

Much of this atmosphere is brought on by McEntee’s vocal performance. His subsonic, guttural murmurs dominate each moment they appear in (and there’s some absolutely crushing yowls to be found on a few tracks, one in particular on “The Fallen Ones”). His is by far the standout performance. The guitars and bass are solid, with subterranean tuning and murky tone. The production on the record contributes the space you’d expect from a cavernous death record -- no surprise, perhaps, given the lineup. And musically, there’s a good smattering of mournful melodies in the vein of Hooded Menace, paired alongside plenty of down-tuned doom riffing. All combined, it’s a strong aesthetic and it works.

Unfortunately, the songwriting leaves this release wanting. On initial listens, I kept waiting for a blast beat or some other uptick in speed that never came. The tempo is a consistent midrange slog from song to song. It’s almost too consistent, and the songs have bled together in my mind. Some of the tracks -- particularly “The Great Tribulation” and “The Fallen Ones” -- have enough going for them in the way of heavy, chugging riffage and dark melodic lines to make for awesome repeated listening. Unfortunately, a lot of the other songs are built around one or two riffs that don’t really go anywhere. That’s fine for the instrumental outro, but it makes for several forgettable, skippable tracks in this album’s length.

This is a shame, given the potential of the lineup. Perhaps McEntee’s vocals are just too brutal for death/doom and that leads to uneven listening. Perhaps these guys have nothing to prove (their chops are unimpeachable) and made a record for the hell of it. Whatever the case, I'm sad to say this ancient ritual got old fast.