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Sanctifying Ritual > Sanctifying Ritual > Reviews > we hope you die
Sanctifying Ritual - Sanctifying Ritual

Threading the old school needle - 70%

we hope you die, June 15th, 2020

Germany’s Sanctifying Ritual released their self-titled debut this year, and it’s been a while in the making. We’re treading that familiar path into the old school, this time wearing our death metal hats, albeit with a more atmospheric, ‘evil’ aesthetic that was once refreshing in a post tech-death world. This is the true heir of the late 80s and early 90s of Sarcofago and Merciless, with a balanced understanding of the NWOBHM roots of this music. We’ve skipped out on the blackened pizza thrash carnival that has managed to turn many intellectually deficient heads in recent years, and instead gone right back to Motorhead via some classic early 80s punk for a good portion of rhythmic bounce.

Production also apes this old school aesthetic, with drums sounding raw and organic, caked in reverb to compensate for the warmth this exudes. Vocals ditto. The guitar tone – in line with Sanctifying Ritual’s archaic influences – is warmer, with an analogue aesthetic, again dripping with reverb to compensate for the lack of bass this entails. However, everything is sharp and crisp enough to do justice to the chaotic proto-black metal riffs that make up the body of this work. Atonality meets tritone play, with the marked distinction of sticking to staccato strumming over tremolo, which not only sets this apart from fully fledged primitive death metal, but also emphasises the complexity that emerges from these rudimentary elements in a more chaotic and haphazard way than metal that was to follow this style. Hell, at this point it should be pointed out that we’re now talking about this album like it was released in 1988, and most extreme metal was yet to come. This is how convincing a relic this is when compared to many other modern attempts in a similar vein.

But there are small licks and refrains that jump out throughout this album that betray its 21st century antecedents. Not least its melding of death metal riffs from the Autopsy school, again a choice that makes sense in the context of Sanctifying Ritual, who – for the most part – bypasses the main trends of influence in American thrash and delves into an older lineage for its cues. But this is all knitted together into a grand, epic vision to the point that the whole thing ebbs and flows in a familiar yet imaginative haze of well crafted, primitive extreme metal. This also goes for their ability to contrast the animalistic elements with sweeping breakdowns, augmented by generic but engaging leads; these are also signalled by a reprieve in the relentless atonality, as melody sets in, and the drums go from their mid-tempo skin bashing to a more free-flowing approach, characterised by choppy fills and slower tempos.

Far from being yet another trip down memory lane, ‘Sanctifying Ritual’ is such a competent and imaginative album, to the point where it feels like an attempt to re-write memory lane entirely. A second chance at history, one that addresses whatever shortcomings we felt were present in those touchstone albums from the old school that are commonly name dropped when discussing the era. What modern or original flourishes are present are deliberately supressed, or so well integrated into the machinery of this album as to contribute to the unity of the whole.

So I’ll end with a word of warning to digest alongside the broadly positive response I have to this album. One wonders if there is enough to the original material found on this release to pull together an album with more of its own identity on future works from this artist. Sanctifying Ritual have enough character and class of their own, to the point where the old school aesthetic becomes a distraction. I mean, for fuck’s sake I’ve spent most of this review gassing on about it like it was their intention. I’d rather devote words to the individual character and philosophy of an artist (or lack thereof) than endlessly pontificate on the cultural streams of metal that each album taps into. But such is the obvious intent with Sanctifying Ritual that it becomes impossible to effectively talk about this album and avoid spending a significant chunk fixated on its revivalist ethic. This remains, despite this caveat, a cut above the rest, and well worth a nosey.

Originally published at Hate Meditations