Blut’s Ritual and Ceremony: Blood Sacrifice on the Altar of Sleep
Not to be confused with the Swedish one-man black metal outfit formerly operating under the same moniker, the über-doom duo Blut call Hampshire and Dorset in the UK home and expunge a gurgling, grotesque misanthropy most black metal can only pretend to stab at in high-contrast black and white photos. Their debut full-length, Ritual and Ceremony (Wolfs Hook Records) tops out at over an hour and creates an atmosphere of such foreboding that to call it anything less than SunnO)))-esque is to sell it short. In three hyper-extended tracks, Blut go deep into dark psychedelia, punishing listeners with unyieldingly heavy riffing and brutal cackled vocals. Even when they see fit to throw a groove in, as they do eight minutes into the opening cut, “Throne Ritual,” they do so with the full knowledge of the brutality surrounding.
I get a lot of emails from bands, but Blut’s was immediately more interesting than most and a great indicator of the two-piece’s attitude and outlook. It was signed “fuck everything.” Bassist/noisemaker N.B. and drummer/guitarist/vocalist/noisemaker S.M. (it’s an initials-only kind of situation) recorded Ritual and Ceremony in Winter 2009, and the record sounds colder than the UK gets. It’s like they imported wind from Greenland. As the 24-minute opener gradually gives way to “And Death Shall Flee from Them,” the course of the album is set. For all the open space in their songs, echoing feedback, waves of pulsating noise, Blut have no room in their ambience for oxygen. S.M.’s vocals occur sporadically and in short burts, and it wouldn’t work any other way. From my understanding, the black metal cave from which they emit only allows sound to escape for a few hours of the forbidden night, and that doesn’t leave much room for lyrical headiness. Spew a little hate, move on to the next riff (or stay on the same one for another seven minutes). Not a bad ethic for this kind of record.
It’s hard not to appreciate the unrelenting aspects of Ritual and Ceremony. The album doesn’t challenge you, doesn’t seem to give a fuck one way or another if you’re on board for the ride. It’s more of a litmus test; can you actually endure what Blut are dishing out? In most cases, the answer is going to be no. There’s nothing about Ritual and Ceremony that’s a good time, unless you’re drunk and feeling evil (but then everything’s a good time), and basically the album winds up being precisely the exercise in ritual its title advertises. N.B. and S.M. clearly know their shit when it comes to crafting unfriendly sounds, and though “And Death Shall Flee from Them” picks up the pace a bit from “Throne Ritual,” the 19 minutes of unmitigated noise that comprises the closing title track more than makes up for any hint of accessibility previously shown (and there wasn’t any). There are notes in there somewhere, but as the band says, “fuck everything.”
File without hesitation alongside your Nortts, your Mosses and your Buried at Seas for its ultra-heaviness and reckless display of malevolence, and keep it in mind for the times when you’ve got the fog machine going in your living room and it’s time to clear out the party. Blut make some truly horrifying noise on Ritual and Ceremony, and for the life of me I don’t think they’d have it any other way. The album’s rough-hewn production only enhances the atmosphere of desolation and primordial disillusionment, and the expanse of the songs is matched only by their effectiveness in conveying what doom can do at its most heinous. If you think you’re up to it, just wait for the buzzsaw guitar squibblies 11 minutes into “Ritual and Ceremony” before you make that judgment for sure, because this is some serious uneasy listening.
Tags: Blut, Dorset, Hampshire, UK, Wolfs Hook
