Ramesses

Possessed By The Rise of Magick

Ritual Productions 2011

The latest album of corrosive doom from the UK's melancholic masters Ramesses creates a suffocating atmosphere.  Invisible Ritual gets things rolling as trippy vocals echo in the distance behind a wall of ropey guitars, riffing in a traditional doom style.  Bleak and barren instrumentation create a somber and transcendent mood on Towers of Silence.  The riffs loom like pillars amidst hazy clouds, nothing feels solid within the framework of this song.  The riffs becomes menacing, like the slow grinding of ungodly teeth.  After some foreboding air-raid sirens, lumbering riffs work towards crushing the listener with their dismal gloom on Sol Nocivo.  A hint of melancholy paints the edges of the song caught somewhere between the funeral doom of Thergothon and the emotional weight of Warning.  Take the pacing of the previous track, add a dragging lurch to the song and then accent it with a dream-like melody and you get Plague Bleak.  The strange guitars and rambling pace create a psychedelic texture to Duel.  The track then shifts into oppressive traditional doom riffage, like a darker Black Sabbath.  Rapidly increasing the tension through building up bass guitars and tapping drums, the title-track eases into existence.  A surreal, dream-like painting is spread across a musical canvas that the song slowly builds and embellishes.  All of a sudden thick, soot covered guitars surge into the melee, creating a burning atmosphere of charred instrumentation and washed out vocals.  A forlorn melody raises its despondent notes towards an uncaring sky around the 4:45 mark.  Ramesses, have conjured up an album of dark oppressive doom that feels as if the mind is escaping to dark vistas through ritualistic release.  The spirit is freed from its earthly prison through riff flagellation.