CEREMONY - Tyranny From Above CD

Although Ceremony are active today, putting out the full length ‘Retribution’ in 2019, they only managed one LP back in the day, 1993’s ‘Tyranny from Above’, before splitting two years later. This is a short bludgeon of an album concocted of low-end guitars, guttural vocals, and dominated by the percussive dictates of a domineering and thick drumkit. This album sees death metal indulge its thrashier side, but demand that it reach for more ambitious musical heights with frequent tritone play, minor key harmonies, and dense chromatic riffing. Again, this reaches for rich and dark atmospheres of Finnish death metal in Demigod and Adramalech, but it is supplemented by a near constant impulse toward speed and aggression a la Sinister, at times reaching for heights of technicality that call to mind early Gorguts.