ALBUM REVIEW: Cleansing Ritual – Sator

SATOR return with their third studio album Cleansing Ritual: a gargantuan monolith of doom new and old. Drawing together the influence and innovation of the genre’s biggest and best names, the Genoa-based trio drill through the sludgy annuls of metal history and strike gold.

With a fuzzy sound drenched in distortion, fans will be quick to draw comparisons to the likes of ELECTRIC WIZARD and NEUROSIS. That’s not to say that SATOR is a swappable soundalike; far from it, in fact. Theirs is a sound that has dragged itself up out of the Italian underground to terrorise speakers the world over, resulting in an identifiable sound that brings enough of its own merit to the table to be worthy of recognition.

The opening of Ancient Disease explodes to life with an earworm riff that listeners will find hard to shake. Stomping around with monstrous fury, it lays the perfect bed for bassist/vocalist Valerio‘s earth-shattering guttural growls. With so much malice and angst, you’ll feel this through to the sinews. What follows through Cleansing Ritual is an unrelenting torrent of roars that are packed full of character and contempt, making this one of the early contenders for vocal performance of the year.

Murder By Music takes more of a trippy approach, the effect-laden guitars sweeping the listener along with wave after surging wave, before culminating in an all-out frenzy that sees all three band members vying for that spotlight. The real achievement is how they manage to all grasp it without it sounding a mess. Every time you replay it, you will find that you zero in on something new, whether it’s the pulsating bass line, Michelangelo’s shelling of the drums or the arsenal of pedals used on Mauro’s guitar. 

Cleansing Ritual is a rich and textured release, wielding a spectacular heaviness, but also a red thread of unease throughout. In addition to the intimidating vocal display, a large, large proponent of this deep-seated dread comes from the cult film and TV quotes interspersed throughout the album. Whether it’s the “Doom’s children” refrain from Conan The Barbarian on a loop to close out the album, or “the funeral is about to begin” from 1979’s horror/fantasy flick Phantasm, there’s an incredibly dark and nerve-wracking feel to the record. Used sparingly enough but peppered into every track, it’s a bold characteristic that pays off superbly. And it’s a great way to expand your filmic horizons too.

There are moments that don’t land quite as well, for example on Solaris, where the riffs cycle through time changes that feel unnatural and laboured, almost as if the wheels are about to come off. Album closer On The Edge might have also benefited from being trimmed down a little. This may seem a daft thing to say of a doom/sludge record but it does toe the line of overstaying its welcome. However, across the 40-minute runtime of Cleansing Ritual, these are tiny hiccups on an otherwise superb album.

Overall, this is essential listening for sludge and doom fans, and if SATOR were not already on your radar, they should be mainstays from here on out. In a year of phenomenal releases, Cleansing Ritual possesses all the qualities to be a dark horse on your end-of-year lists. Watch this space.

Rating: 8/10

Cleansing Ritual is set for release on April 22nd via Argonauta Records.

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