EP REVIEW: Spiritual Disease – Grief Ritual
Say what you will about the UK but we are really bloody good at producing utterly miserable hardcore. Admittedly we don’t have much else to be proud of, but at least in the likes of LEECHED, MASTIFF, HELPLESS and more we have a fitting soundtrack to our country’s ever more depressing slide into intolerance and dystopianism. Adding their voices to this choir of discontent are GRIEF RITUAL – a pissed off quartet who trade in the kind of blackened metallic hardcore that’ll have you begging for the void in no time. Spiritual Disease is their debut EP, and there’s not a trace of mercy to be found here.
Given the work of the bands mentioned above, it’s probably fair to say that GRIEF RITUAL don’t come too far out of left-field on Spiritual Disease. Across 21 minutes, the four-piece prove that they have all the essentials absolutely nailed down, from brutish beatdowns, to blackened blasts, to massive death metal-inflected riffs and grooves. Their sound is thick and potent, as indeed you would expect from producer Joe Clayton given his work with WODE, EARTH MOVES and the aforementioned LEECHED and MASTIFF. Chris Ward’s guitars are sludgy and suffocating, as is Jake Murray’s rumbling bass, while James Broady’s drums cut through with force and clarity as the band lay a foundation for frontperson Jamie Waggett’s predominantly barked vocals.
Spiritual Disease is also sensibly dynamic, with the band making use of moodier atmospheric passages – particularly in tracks like Immurement and Pareidolia – to deliver on that age-old concept in which the heavy parts feel heavier thanks to the quieter parts that set them up. Again, this is tried and tested stuff, but it still takes a band with the skill to pull it off in a manner that flows as well as it does here. Atrophy is another dynamic number, its slow, ominous start giving way to a NOLA-esque groove that makes for one of the album’s most compelling riffs of all. It’s all top-notch really though, with each one of these five tracks offering enough beef to put even the most well-stocked butcher to shame.
Perhaps the icing on this very miserable cake is the record’s overall thematic thrust. This isn’t just hardcore that’s angry for the sake of it, it’s an EP that draws from the very real frustrations of the world we find ourselves in. On opener Dissolution the band appear to take aim at the relentless grinding work schedule many find themselves trapped in in the name of ‘getting by’. It asks “What is all this anguish worth?”, with Waggett bellowing “You’re working yourself to death”. Immurement meanwhile goes out to “anyone who feels trapped by the world, cut off by their health, or completely paralyzed by their situation”, while recent single Telluric aims its fury at the deplorable destruction of the NHS under our feckless Tory government.
Raging in every way, Spiritual Disease may rest on ideas and concepts we’ve heard plenty of times before – politically-charged lyrics, post-metal-informed dynamics, a general unrelenting misery – but the vigour and hatred with which GRIEF RITUAL deliver all this makes it practically impossible to turn away from. Our nation, like much of the rest of the world, is diseased indeed, and while bands like GRIEF RITUAL might not offer the cure, they do at least hit a very angry spot that offers something resembling solidarity and catharsis.
Rating: 8/10
Spiritual Disease is set for release on September 9th via self-release.
Like GRIEF RITUAL on Facebook.