Ritual Decay are a trio from Memphis, Tennessee that plays a very blasphemous form of black/death metal and this is a review of their 2014 cassette "The Conquering Darkness" which was released by Caligari Records.
The cassette starts out with with a dark and heavy sound before going into a fast and raw black metal direction along with piercing high pitched screams and blast beats and after awhile deep death metal growls become a part of the music which also leads to a mixture of slow and fast parts which also brings in an old school early 90's feeling.
As the recording continues the band start going into a more early second wave black metal direction while also bringing in a decent amount of melody as well as keeping around a good amount of death metal elements and on a couple of the songs they bring in some angry sounding shouts and on the last song they go for more of a slow and heavy direction while still having their fast moments
On these cassette Ritual Decay go back to the raw roots of second generation black metal and bring in some influences from the dark side of death metal to create a recording that is very fast, bone crushing, raw and heavy sounding along with a great amount of blasphemy and morbid sounding melodies which a lot of newer bands seem to be lacking.
Song lyrics cover darkness, occult and blasphemous themes, while the production has a very dark, raw, heavy and old school sound along with the bass guitars being mixed down low in the mix as well as some of the songs being very long and epic in length.
In my opinion Ritual Decay are a very great sounding blasphemous black/death metal band and if you are a fan of this musical genre, you should check out this cassette. RECOMMENDED TRACKS INCLUDE "Reach For the Axe" and "An Oath to Spilling Blood". 9 out of 10.
http://caligarirecords.bandcamp.com/
.jpg)
