RITUAL - The Summoning Digi-CD

Limited Edition of 500 copies.

If you can appreciate simple, catchy riffs, equally simple but effective songwriting and a strong sense of melodicism, you can't really go wrong with this. Sure, most songs only have a handful of riffs, but since they range from nice headbangers to majestic, haunted melodies you can't really find anything to fault. The songs that make up "The Summoning" are almost universally strong from front to back and if the band had opted out of the out-of-place backing death grunts and employed a capable live drummer, we'd have what I'd go so far as to call a timeless masterpiece. As it stands, it's still a very compelling listen and highly recommended for fans of 90's black metal that puts more stock in riffsmanship and soul-scouring melodicism than punishing brutality.