Spasm - From Miracles to Ruined - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

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.

With a passion for intense and fast Death Metal, Spasmodic was founded late 2005 in Ludvika, Sweden by Alexander Högbom (VOLTURYON, OCTOBER TIDE) along with Johan Haglund and Tommy Haglund. In same year of their formation, they released their first demo, InchSoon to Be Lacerated.Inch

The essence of Ferruccio Busoni' music lies in it's synthesis of his Italian and German ancestry, emotion and intellect, imagination and rigour. This seventh volume in Naxos' highly-praised series brings together several virtuosic operatic transcriptions.