Perhaps the bullshit belief of the world’s end at the beginning of the year 2000 inspired bands to make better and better albums?? Fuck, I don’t know, why are there so many great releases this year so far? Ritual Carnage’s debut was great but this follow-up is superb! Thrash/Death Metal as played in the 80’s, hell yeah! A bit strange is that in the booklet is written that the 4 bonus tracks are only for the vinyl version but they are also featured on my CD?! Fortunately they are, because among these bonus tracks is a extremely cool cover of ‘Hit the lights’! I don’t want to mention any song title but will make one exception. The song ‘Escape from the light’ is softer and slower than the others, the vocalist also sings a couple of lines in this one. Anyway, in total you get 15 songs which last for an hour, could you ask for more? (Saldiac)
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Ritual Carnage’s debut ‘The Highest Law’ had quite an impact on me. Fast, aggressive Thrash with some contributions from Corpsegrinder (Cannibal Corpse) and Erik Rutan (Hate Eternal/Morbid Angel). The style on the new album isn’t that much oriented on the old Thrash from the 80s. It also has some influences from the Death Metal scene, and even some modern stuff, which almost sounds like Machine Head to me. Sometimes the atmosphere reminds me of Sepultura’s ‘Beneath the Remains’, although it doesn’t even come close to the class of that classick. The drums remind me of Bathory’s ‘Under the sign of the Black Mark’. I can state that this album is definitely not as good as the first album. It was recorded at Morrisound Studios so the balance in the sound is O.K. But that kinda takes away the charm they use to have. I also sometimes here some melodic guitar leads that could have been on one of the later Death albums, while other solos are total Slayer rip-offs. The song ‘Escape from the light’ has clean vocals which are completely unnecesary, and don’t give the song the feeling it might have had with a good vocalist. The bonus tracks start off with Metallica’s ‘Hit the lights’, which is allright musically but it is a vocal disaster. The other songs add nothing new and could have been in the regular tracklist. An O.K. release, but not essential. (Stijn)
