Sometimes you just need a win. Sometimes you just need to pick the easy one because you know exactly what you’re going to get out of it, and there’s a certain comfort and familiarity to that. And really, there are few things besides peanut butter and jelly that go together as well as death metal and 20 Buck Spin, so when I noticed we had the debut full-length from Ritual Mass kicking around, it was a no-brainer. I’m not overly familiar with them, but when I see that genre/label combo on the list, I’m compelled, but there’s lots more reasons to be drawn to Cascading Misery than just that.
Ritual Mass recently made their way over to the hallowed grounds of the 20 Buck Spin roster just in time for their debut LP, and their signing also marks the first 20 Buck Spin band from the label’s current home of Pittsburgh to be signed, so that’s a cool little fact for ya. Cascading Misery is a love letter to all things gruesome and grimy, a symphony of “the bludgeoning infliction of pain and the slow peel of skin by flame, rife with both sonic chaos and extinguished hope,” according to the band themselves. As with most, if not all, 20 Buck Spin death metal releases, the atmosphere is decidedly thick and cavernous, with a gooey layer of fuzzy reverb covering pretty much everything and a general sense of dread and unease being the name of the game. Now, this might sound like run-of-the-mill death metal to you, and we have talked before about how the signature sound of 20 Buck Spin cuts both ways: you know what you’re going to get, but also…you kinda already know what you’re going to get. I will still maintain that Ritual Mass mix it up enough and go extreme enough to warrant them for your consideration, though.
And boy do they go extreme. Cascading Misery is everything that it says on the tin and more. This is the brand of technical death metal that uses that technicality in service of the most evil sounding music on the planet. Bassist and vocalist N. Dudash uses his resonant bellow to great effect at encapsulating what the absolute bowels of hell sound like, and the guitars weave their way between dissonant, jarring melodies, crushing breakdowns and rapid fire-tremolo riffs. This is about as heavy as heavy music can get, but the one thing I will absolutely credit Ritual Mass on is that they never lose sight of what makes a song a *song*. The focus on the oppressive and hopeless atmosphere never comes at the cost of them doing cool things on their instruments, and there are plenty of hooks and riffs that keep me coming back for more, such as any of the dozens that get thrown around in the frantic sprint of the title track or the booming synths that begin the album on opener “Obsidian Mirror.” There is a real dedication to the songwriting craft shown here, never more so than when the band chooses to let their songs fall apart and disintegrate as they get to the end. This is the cool stuff that I was alluding to, and you can get a taste of what I mean at the end of “Obsidian Mirror,” when the melodies of the song slowly get broken down until it’s just one note ringing out a static tune, or the end of “Looming Shadows,” where the riffs that have been keeping the song in motion do what I can only call “falling down the stairs” as they start becoming less comprehensible until the song completely breaks apart at the end. Especially in the thematic centerpiece of the album, the nearly fifteen minute “Disquiet,” you get a real sense for how dynamics and mood are just as important on this album as riffs, as the track slowly morphs from plodding, churning death metal into an extended clean break and then back into a wallop of a finish for this album.
Cascading Misery definitely doesn’t pull any punches or hold anything back, but good on them for not doing that. This is an explosive debut from a band that I now realize I need to keep my eye on. I’m glad they found a home that makes sense for them; I could see this album released on no other label. Needless to say, the future looks insanely bright for a band that is so grim and gloomy.
— Ian
Cascading Misery is available now on 20 Buck Spin, if I didn’t say it enough already. For more information on Ritual Mass, visit their Instagram page.
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