RITUAL ASCENSION – PROFANATION OF THE ADAMIC COVENANT LP (Sentient Ruin Laboratories)

When times are tough, there’s nothing quite like the foreboding, ominous rumble and tremor of a good Death / Doom album. And here we have one. ‘Profanation of the Adamic Covenant’ is the debut disinterment from Ritual Ascension, comprising Dylan from Suffering Hour (vocals), John from Void Rot (strings) and their Aberration partner in grime Eric (skins), with the subterranean reverberations granted a suitably organic production, ensuring that all sepulchral emissions conjured are as potent and precise as they are putrid.

This is one of those records that sounds better the higher you push up the volume. Five graven curses of potent, macabre deathly doom adulation crawl forth like wretched corpses, casting spite and malice upon this worthless world where all things are doomed to the same indignant end. The antichristian sentiment expressed along the way is welcome. Songwriting is superb, not just the musical component – the lyrics are terrifically crafted, also.

The average song length is around ten minutes and it’s mostly slow-to-mid-paced although the shortest offering, ‘Cursed Adamic Tongues’, does break into a gallop momentarily. Reference points might seem obvious given the other bands these guys are involved in but I’d definitely include Grave Upheaval, Disembowelment and Encoffination, whose debut may or may not have inspired the name Ritual Ascension.

It sounds like a drum kit was assembled using coffin parts, handles and all, which are being struck by human bones. The guitars were custom built by Ed Gein. Vocals are the cries of the damned protesting the desecration of their final resting place from beyond the plundered grave. The trudging, lumbering dirges linger and crush, dragging the listener down to the very bottom of the abyss, from whence erupts the quake. Then we come to the agonising monolithic dreadscape of closing bodyblow / soulrip ‘Kolob (At the Throne of Elohim)’ and everything ends in a pulverising stewed mess as all is ripped asunder.

Evilometer: 666/666