Inferi - Heaven Wept - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Infernal Torment - Birthrate Zero [COMPACT DISCS] date 11/05/2021

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 InchObsidian MirrorInch 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.By the time the epic fourteen-minute album closer 'Disquiet' dissipates into a mass of formless static, Ritual Mass have dragged you into a world where suffering is not an end but a condition of existence. Cascading Misery is music for the dissolution of hope, the terror of being, and the long march toward death. Album Tracks 1. 1. Obsidian Mirror 2. 2. Immeasurable Hell 3. 3. Looming Shapeless Entity 4. 4. Cascading Misery 5. 5. Frozen Marrow 6. 6. Disquiet

The stories of Mizmor and Hell are, for all intents and purposes, inextricably intertwined. For twenty years A.L.N. (Mizmor) and M.S.W. (Hell) have been orbiting the same fertile creative circles in the Pacific Northwest. They've done stints as live/touring members for each other's solo endeavors and they've contributed their distinctive voices to each other's recordings. A.L.N. and M.S.W. even aligned their cathartic outlets for a now impossible to find Mizmor/Hell split, unleashed upon the world in 2014. A collaboration record like Alluvion feels as if it was always predestined.The blueprint for Alluvion had been drafted long ago and it wallowed in obscurity, it's memory swirling in the ether, patiently waiting for a rogue spark to manifest it's existence. And, as luck would have it, when A.L.N. and M.S.W. once again found themselves in the midst of each other's boundless creative universes, they were now prepared to undertake the monumental task.A.L.N. and M.S.W. intend for the compositions on Alluvion to be used as a map to help navigate the listener through bouts of psychic distress, touching upon emotions both terribly familiar and wholly extrinsic. Pensive, tranquil movements combust into passages of absolutely soul-searing sludge. Suffocating, blackened doom bursts out of unknown crevasses; punctuated by the unsettling voices of beings doing their damnedest to claw their way out of canyons carved by mental anguish. It's a harrowing journey, but one that seeks to provide a necessary catharsis. Alluvion is meant to act as a lens into the mind's seemingly mystifying geography; a vessel for the self-exploration of the complex terrains of the human psyche. Album Tracks 1. Begging to Be Lost 2. Vision I 3. Pandemonium's Throat 4. Vision II