Ramesses: Curses!
Quit your day job and sacrifice a lemur, Ramesses have a new album! And a brutal, disgusting slab of doomed madness it is. Titled Take the Curse and released through the band’s own Ritual Productions, the second Ramesses full-length follows 2007’s Misanthropic Alchemy, splits with Unearthly Trance (2009) and Negative Reaction (2004), and two EPs, 2005’s We Will Lead You to Glorious Times and 2009’s Baptism of the Walking Dead, all three tracks from which appear here as well. The Dorset band play the kind of doom your mother warned you about, the kind of doom that you lose friends over, the kind of doom where your woman leaves you because you refuse to trim your beard.
The kind of doom where one backpatch just doesn’t seem to cut it.
You get the point.
Originally an offshoot of Electric Wizard, from which guitarist Tim Bagshaw and drummer Mark Greening split following the 2002 Let us Prey album, Ramesses definitely have elements of droning riffery in common with Jus Oborn’s influential outfit, but theirs is a dirtier, grittier, nastier sound. The death metal growling of bassist/vocalist Adam Richardson (who was also in Electric Wizard predecessor Thy Grief Eternal with Oborn), layered with cleaner sub-melodic shouting, gives Ramesses songs a different atmosphere entirely. A sense of ritual is maintained, but it’s more like the ceremony is taking place out back behind the pub than on some altar out of an early-‘70s horror flick. “Black Hash Mass” backs me up on this, with Greening working in blastbeats amid Satanic sampling and horrific wails from Richardson.
Take the Curse opens up mean with “Iron Crow” and stays that way for the duration, but there is some diversity to be found throughout if you’re willing to hear it. The guitars keep basically the same tone throughout, Bagshaw providing so much low end that at points it’s hard to figure out where he ends and Richardson begins, but speed varies and Richardson’s shifting vocals – from death growls and screams to Steve Von Till-style shouts in the verses of “Take the Curse” to moments a little closer to home in Dorset – do a lot to change up the sound. Still, the consistency of atmosphere is that of mud, and Ramesses prove their sludge to be angrier than whatever you want to put next to it. Even the quick, 2:38 riff and sample exercise, “Vinho dos Mortos,” is rife with a tension that finds its payoff in “Baptism of the Walking Dead,” the longest cut on Take the Curse at 7:14. It might be the most vicious too, though it has some stiff competition in that regard.
“Another Skeleton” introduces the second phase of Take the Curse, wherein Ramesses try out a few changes in pace and approach. The track itself is punishingly slow, but more doom than sludge, with ringing tones behind Bagshaw’s guitar and Richardson balancing his growls and shouts more in favor of the latter. There’s plenty of time for an ambient sensibility to develop, but even here things are down, down, down and totally doomed. If Take the Curse has an upbeat moment (it doesn’t), it occurs during the faster, once-again-blasting “Hand of Glory,” which picks up the pace considerably from “Another Skeleton” and has an improvisational feel that pans out over the gradual slowdown and liberal sampling that leads to “The Weakening.” Worth noting that, put together, “Hand of Glory” and “The Weakening” aren’t as long as “Baptism of the Walking Dead” (they come close), but each manages to devastate in its way, and “The Weakening” especially proves a highlight on almost every front, with Greening’s cymbals just a little low in the mix, but present enough to give a sense of how they must damage the ears in a live setting, Richardson’s growling rhythmically tied to the riff and Bagshaw working in some feedback and noise to the ending moments. And just when you think it’s over and you can’t handle any more audio maliciousness, Take the Curse closer “Khali Mist” locks you in a box of occult riffery and buries you alive.
Ramesses’ sophomore LP is an album that gets stronger as it goes on, sucks you in more with repeat listens, and seems to ingest you every time only to spit you out for your unworthiness. Simply put, Take the Curse is as doomed as doom gets. The solo Bagshaw works into “Khali Mist” is a late goodbye, because by the time you get there, you’re already long gone. The far out evil psychedelia and aural cruelty are undeniable. The deathly mass is too bloody to be ignored. Ramesses’ Take the Curse isn’t going to stick with everyone, but there is a population of goat-worshipping heathen heads out there who will swear by it in the years to come. Get it and listen at least twice, then rethink your life and join the cult.
Tags: Dorset, Ramesses, Ritual Productions, UK
Excellent review my friend. I agree with summation totally.
My fear is not enough people are going to here this or check it out. Despite is “availability”.
Doomed-heads NEED to check this out! NOW!!
By the way, my fiancé is always harping on the size and length of my goatee and when has one back patch ever been enough. Only now that I am pushing 40 (ok, walking through the door), my Mom has only recently come to except that I’ll never “out-grow” the music I listen. I blame it on the fact I stopped growing somewhere early on in junior high. Anyway, she’d hate this.
Dorset pride! Will have to check them out now! Have to support the very, very few bands that emerge from the great forests of Dorset.