Overprocessed for my taste, a mashup of Obscura and Necrophagist with modern sound, technical licks and lacking direction.

This is definietly not your typical techdeath release. This is a band that really stands out from the competition. Starting out with an ominous intro with an effective use of the cello at the end that flows in to what can only be considered a (very good) funeral doom track. "Heresiarch I-III" is pretty standard techdeath before an interlude in form of the beautiful ambient track "Soulrending Materiae" which implements short snippets of violin, saxophone, piano, acoustic guitar and an angelic female voice. Then we get two tracks that are more deathcore than techdeath before another very soft and beautiful interlude. Then comes another standard techdeath track before rounding everything off with a behemoth of a track in the 15-minute "Denouement Knell", which is by far the best track of the album. So don't let the cover art fool you because it doesn't reflect the music at all since it looks like it's a power metal album.

Written by Nejde on 10.11.2023 at 12:23

So don't let the cover art fool you because it doesn't reflect the music at all since it looks like it's a power metal album.

I was actually expecting thrash or OSDM from the cover haha, but yeah the end result was surprising. I found myself feeling like it was deathcore more than any other style, although it obviously has tech-death and prog-death elements, and even some intriguing dabblings with classical and other sounds. A surprisingly solid listen, and the 15-minute closer indeed stands out

Love the artwork

I also love the cover-art, that's not saying the album will be any good though, so time to check it out.

Edit: Well, it's far from a bad quality release but the music ain't half as striking as the cover-art is. The technicality is mind boggling to say the least and there's certainly a ton of brutality, but the bass work is by far the most superior element to feature imo. There's a lot of instrumentation and orchestrations going on but nothing that I find all that memorable or appealing unfortunately, they sound to me like a slightly less interesting version of Beyond Creation

I found this to be one of the more underrated records of 2023. Feel like not enough people wanted to invest their time into this due to it dropping so late in the year, but if you’re a tech death/progressive death fan then I absolutely recommend giving this a listen. Admittedly it took a couple listens to really “get” this, but I feel the time investment is well worth it.

The problem with this one is not that it's bad... It is just The Ritual Aura's worst release to date. Its alright, certainly not bad but not great either. A high 6.