Blight upon Martyred Sentience

Impetuous Ritual, coming out of Brisbane, have released one of the more sonically interesting and aesthetically cruel metal albums of the year in Blight Upon Martyred Sentience. Much like New Zealand's Ulcerate, Impetuous Ritual dabble in a murderously dissonant soundscape, but unlike Ulcerate they create something crushing, like a massive weight, rather than an ambiguously fiery storm. Oppressive is a fitting word to describe the material on here, the sounds enveloping the listener like a thick black fog. This is the aim of the record and this is what it does well; it begins somewhat slowly on Void Cohesion, clangorous drums and borderline doomy guitar passages leading the listener into the rest of the album which rarely lets up on its cohesive wall of sound.

In terms of its sound design and songwriting this album is actually quite straightforward; it seeks to create a massive, violent, swirling mass of guitars backed by ghastly vocals and an alternating mix of lethargic and vicious percussion. It bears resemblance to death metal, death doom metal and war metal, (without truly embodying any one of these entirely) and it's easy to how these forms of music influenced the writing on Blight Upon Martyred Sentience.

The main issue I have with it is that it simply lacks dynamics in the compositions. I can dig the atmosphere conjured up by the band and respect how single-minded the record is towards creating this atmosphere, but it can only take it so far before running it into the ground. It does pick up speed as the album progresses and becomes more of an active assault on the senses rather than a sickening crawl like that of the opening track, but there's a sense that Impetuous Ritual are capable of moving beyond this formula and creating something truly masterful, as good as this record is.

This is much recommended to anybody looking for something unrelentingly heavy, or dissonant, oppressive, crushing, etc. as it certainly has these qualities in spades; and more important than that, it utilizes them well.