Impetuous Ritual
Iniquitous Barbarik Synthesis


3.7
great

Review

by Robert Garland STAFF
May 23rd, 2023 | 11 replies


Release Date: 05/12/2023 | Tracklist

Review Summary: Sunny death metal.

Among death metal contemporaries, Impetuous Ritual would find themselves in strange company. You see their brand of punishing death metal is only emulated within a few choice acts, more notably of which is fellow Aussies, Portal (who share members) and steer away from flamboyant runs of melody or technical aggressive riffs. Impetuous Ritual are a wall of sound, of dissonance. It's very being is an affront to the norm while immersing, smothering a world of sinister noise and swirling translucent distortion. Yet, they are very much death metal in essence, in energy and intensity. The band’s more beastly soundscapes leave a listener in a precarious state, balancing claustrophobic swathes of cavernous inaccessibility—contemporary avant garde be damned to the lowest and blackest of pits. Iniquitous Barbarik Synthesis simply continues where Unholy Congregation of Hypocritical Ambivalence and Blight Upon Martyred Sentience discordantly left off. “Sanguinary Abstraction” ebbs into being a slow building plod like a blight against serenity. Impetuous Ritual continues to blotch mess against an empty canvas, not unsimilar to a toddler stabbing a paintbrush into their hobby art.

How does that look? It’s beautiful, rough barks cutting clearly through the din. Wailing guitar solos dancing in the air. The feedback of “Rite of Impalement” glistens against the distortion while “Necromantic Esurience” ensures the swarth and grind Impetuous Ritual designs around their brand. Iniquitous Barbarik Synthesis is uncompromisingly unsettling, but still manages to churn out a surprise or two under the guise of the band’s more traditional, one-dimensional aesthetic. The twelve-minute progeny catapulting a world of ongoing rhythms and atmospheric dives into the band’s best bookend to date. Slow, doom melodies creep into the mix, drawing out a sense of foreboding, throttling the atmosphere away from the chaotic wall to wall of extreme dissonance. This near drone is at odds with the rest of the album’s painstakingly curated avant death-isms and yet it’s the yin and yang that brings Iniquitous Barbarik Synthesis together—an eleventh-hour saving grace set in a field of bleakness.

At first glance, the closing “Metempsychosis” doesn’t fall far from the branches to which the rest of the album wholly grows. If Iniquitous Barbarik Synthesis is comparable to a tree, it’s without a doubt covered in bark, but it bites too. Impetuous Ritual continues to dominate more extreme nuance, allocating lighter flourishes on melody in sparring, defining moments. That doesn’t change to more one-dimensional leanings that unnaturally sap out of the music’s more linear moments (to which there are quite a few). That said, and despite the album’s slightly longer tracks, Iniquitous Barbarik Synthesis doesn’t drag or bloat and is exactly what it needs to be: furious and unrelentingly chaotic. Impetuous Ritual returns to the blackest of pits once again.




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user ratings (21)
3.6
great


Comments:Add a Comment 
Gnocchi
Staff Reviewer
May 23rd 2023


18058 Comments

Album Rating: 3.7

unessential essential 2023 dm listens...

evilford
May 23rd 2023


59779 Comments


Hey cool gotta check nice rev

Gnocchi
Staff Reviewer
May 23rd 2023


18058 Comments

Album Rating: 3.7

Nice work Ford

Kusangii
May 23rd 2023


5144 Comments


I fucking love death metal man

Gnocchi
Staff Reviewer
May 23rd 2023


18058 Comments

Album Rating: 3.7

I can't get away from it this year lol

Azog
May 23rd 2023


1041 Comments


My personal DMAOTY, so far.

naughtcturnal
May 23rd 2023


2474 Comments

Album Rating: 4.5

Helll yesss baby this is a good one

Azazzel
May 24th 2023


219 Comments

Album Rating: 4.0

scale of sound in impressive. doesn't halt and lurch like other avant-garde, this thing is one continuous aural wormholes from a dissonant dimension

BitterJalapenoJr
Contributing Reviewer
May 24th 2023


579 Comments


checking in so I don't forget to listen - loads I need to catch up on this year. Michelin * quality review as expected.

Gnocchi
Staff Reviewer
May 25th 2023


18058 Comments

Album Rating: 3.7

Thank you for your continued patronage guys.

Rowhaus
May 25th 2023


4871 Comments

Album Rating: 4.0

This was exactly what I needed today. Just absolutely pulverizing filthy dm engulfing my ears.



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