Originally self-released in 2009 in an edition of 100 copies, The Dead’s Ritual Executions now sees an issue 10 times its original breadth thanks to Diabolical Conquest Records, the label imprint of the extreme metal e-zine of the same name. The Brisbane, Australia, trio’s second album, Ritual Executions was remastered by Aphotic Mote of Portal and is a skillful blend of death and doom metal that has enough stoner groove in its riffing to satisfy the one end, and guttural so-called “Cookie Monster” vocals that’d make George “Corpsegrinder” Fischer or Glen Benton proud. It’s not death/doom in the European tradition, which would imply a My Dying Bride or early Paradise Lost kind of pacing and drama, but a rougher take that sews American-style metallic extremity to traditional stonerisms.

Ritual Executions opens with “Burn Your Dead,” a sort of mission statement for the zombie-obsessed The Dead that reaches over eight minutes and culls the aforementioned elements as smoothly as I’ve heard it done. Guitarist/bassist Adam Keleher riffs Electric Wizard-style, but the context for those riffs comes with Mike Yee’s low growling and Chris Morse’s heavy-footed double-kick, so it’s not like anything Electric Wizard has ever done. As the album proceeds, tracks like “Cannibal Abattoir” and “Centurion” up the death metal level, and album centerpiece “Born in a Grave,” opens up with some blast beats, seeming to approach the stoner/death thing from the other end until it locks in a ‘90s-ish groove in its verses. Yee’s vocals are unipolar. He screams high every now and then, but it’s death metal all the way, which for a release like Ritual Executions, is probably how it should be. Crooning over riffs as dirty as Keleher’s wouldn’t work anyway.

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