EP REVIEW: Fixed Ritual – Flood Peak

Sludge. Like all genre tags it is obscenely overused, to the point of meaning nothing. When a band says they play sludge metal, or have sludgy elements, it often means that everything is down-tuned and the pace is slow. Sludge used to be an endurance. The vocalist sounded like they were chewing glass with a battery acid chaser. The instruments screamed and sounded as abused as they often were. Sludge took the tropes of doom and death metal, blended them with noise and hardcore, fuzzed it up and unleashed it on unsuspecting listeners. Sludge should be nasty. And FLOOD PEAK do it better than most.

Following on from their 2018 debut Plagued By Sufferers, Fixed Ritual is thirty minutes of a band letting everything go to create sonic punishment on a grand scale. The bass and drums are thunderous, while the guitar lines cut sharp and angular through the production. When moments of light do appear, they are snuffed out by visceral, suffocating noise.

Lyrically, the band verges on pure nihilism. Peter Layman delivers short, barked lines, backed by a near-constant wall of noise. The moments of calm, like at the end of Salve Curator, act as breathers for the band before they launch into the unrelenting Feral Wraiths. At other points, they break the tracks apart. Offering extended sections of distortion and droning riffs. The collaborations between FULL OF HELL and MERZBOW, as well as SUNN 0))), have clearly had an impact but FLOOD PEAK never sound derivative.

This is never more clear than on the epic closing track Sectarian Hilt. Across nine minutes they interweave punishing aggression with more reflective, instrumental sections, which build together. It is the end. Not just for the EP, but on a much larger scale and FLOOD PEAK perfectly showcase the destruction and the violence, but also the calm that comes with it.

The dumpster fire of 2020 has spread and 2021 is the next to go up in flames. FLOOD PEAK are the perfect soundtrack to these dark days, promising to leave the listener battered and bruised. Fixed Ritual is dark and oppressive. It demands your attention to from start to finish and is certain to end up on more than a few ‘Best Of’ lists.

Rating: 9/10

Fixed Ritual is set for release on January 22nd via Anima Recordings.

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