Cult Ritual - Self Titled LP

Artist: Cult Ritual
Album: Self Titled LP
Release: 2009
Label: Youth Attack

Tracklist:

1. Holiday
2. Horror Sale
3. Ugly Years
4. Lude
5. Nailed
6. Failed
7. Saturday's Blood
8. Last Time
9. Cancer Money

Rarely does a piece of music come along and completely decimate me in the way in which Cult Ritual's debut LP does. I hate to speak in what seems like total hyperbole, but this album has completely destroyed my conception of what modern hardcore can be and where it can go. Cult Ritual has reached greatness in the past, especially with their astonishing 2nd EP, but neither they nor any bands in recent memory have attained the supreme in the ways that they have with this album.

One of the first things I noticed about this album was how the band employed new and interesting additions to their sound. First and foremost, the guitar tone is warmer than anything they've used in the past. This means the album may not be as visceral (in a purely aural sense) as the 2nd EP (thanks to the great work of Carson), but it is no less intense or affecting. It's definitely the best sound from the band, thus far. Also noticeable is the appearance of "noise" interludes. This may sound annoying to some, but they work extremely well in maintaining the atmosphere the albums possesses.

The LP opens with "Holiday," which begins with swathes of cold, electronic sounds and snippets of voices, as well as a sample from the 3rd EP, before erupting into feedback and, eventually, into the fast, noisy hardcore for which the band is known. What follows on the A-side are five of the most furious tracks of thrashing hardcore the band has done. It's hard to pick highlights from these, especially when they are uniformly flawless and flow together so well, but one could focus on where the blitzkrieg ends with the one-two punch of "Nailed" and "Failed." The former finds that band at its most violent, but the latter is probably the highlight of the entire A-side. "Failed" begins in the same aggressive manner as "Nailed," but halfway through, the song blossoms into the unexpected with disgustingly beautiful guitars and the refrain of "Just crush my face." This emotional outburst floored me upon my first listening.

The song flows into "Saturday's Blood," which begins with three minutes (!!!) of nothing but the same, simple drum part. Normally, I would be pissed off by this sort of thing, but after the climax of "Failed," it's a necessary reprieve. The song eventually bursts into the full band playing, but it's a slower, more flowing Cult Ritual. This song, like the rest of the album, possesses the quality of a sort of controlled chaos; Instead of an all-out assault, the band plays with a real precision that sets it apart from its peers.

The B-side opens with the soft strumming of delayed guitars with tremolo and an uncomfortable sample from Andy Warhol's Trash (Paul Morrissey, 1970). Guitars twang (a lot on this side of the album) while a monotone voice quickly recites the title of the song, "Last Time," over and over, tripping over his words. Being the second of the two five-minute songs, the song slowly envelops the listener into it. Like the rest of the album, this song contains absolutely phenomenal lyrics. The song then merges into the final, epic song, a reworked and re-recorded version of "Cancer Money." The original is great, for sure, but the LP version is far superior in its hailstorm of feedback, auditory shrapnel, and ultra-heaviness (five-minute mark), all before slowly fading out into unknown depths.

Unlike this drawn-out write-up, the album hovers around the thirty-minute mark and is, despite being a hardcore record, the perfect length for this sort of LP. This review probably won't do anything for the band being labeled a "hype band," nor do the ridiculous eBay auctions of this LP (If you were one of the people who paid $172.50 and $102.50, then you make me sick.), but that sort of thing doesn't matter when the band is as good as Cult Ritual. It is truly amazing to see how far this band has come from their first demo. This is not only the best hardcore LP of the year (props to Punch, though), but the year's best LP, period. I've been listening to this album habitually for about three months and my opinion has yet to change: I can say with confidence, barring any freak accident, that I do not see anyone coming close to being able to scale the monolith that is the Cult Ritual LP.

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-Adam