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Doomed
Belgians Rituals of the Dead Hand unleash their albums every three years, as if on schedule, “The Wretched and the Vile” is their third opus. They are usually credited with being a black/doom metal band owing to their previous works “Blood Oath” (2018) and “With Hoof and Horn” (2021). Well, we hope that nobody would think of such an idea now.
For that matter, only one single song from the past albums – “Vuurstaeck”, the last piece on “With Hoof and Horn” – may be caught having doom metal elements. And even then, it’s more likely drone metal, passages of which were also presented in previous songs. Anyway, slow-paced metal music does not mean doom metal by default – Rituals of the Dead Hand never sought to express tragic nature, sorrow, detached melancholy, thoughtfulness or something else like that to stick on them a doom metal label. If you want to know what black/doom metal is, just listen to “Darkside” by Christ Agony (except for their techno-pieces).
So you could appreciate plain slow groovy black metal on “Blood Oath”, perhaps a little on the verge of depressive black metal, but never crossing that border: after all, these Belgian guys perform too angry music compared to Shining. In its turn, “With Hoof and Horn” was mostly slow atmospheric black metal, very sombre, they even surpassed Barathrum in this regard, although this album could more accurately be described as an amalgam of Barathrum and Mgła.
Thus, the newest album seems to be a much more brutal release, even the old-school black metal component has noticeably declined here: in particular, you could catch a Burzum vibe in the mid-paced section of “Inception“ on “With Hoof and Horn“, but now such an analogy is out of the question. Yes, somewhere in the middle of “Mayhem and the Goat“, as well as in the finale of this composition, you can lay ears on a Mayhem-like passage with a typical high pitched rasp à la Attila that stands out from the general background of the song/album, but this is experimental Mayhem so to say, while on “Blood Oath” we heard a riff in the traditions of classic Mayhem in the opening song “Bonderkuil”.
In turn the strong influence/impact of death metal is noticeable on “The Wretched and the Vile” from the very first song “The Restless Doomed“, it is also manifested through death metal-ish tremolo picking, well, not black metal-ish at all. In the finale of “Ius Cruentationis” you can recognize the Bolt Thrower riffing manner, however, such an element was heard as far back as on “Blood Oath”. While the final slow section of “De Gnijdige” is nothing more than riffing in the vein of classic Morbid Angel, even the slightly chaotic solo in this passage is reminiscent of Morbid Angel. These are just the most obvious places.
Definitely, Rituals of the Dead Hand openly joined the banners of black/death metal. Moreover, this is the old school, although sometimes it is disguised as a modern approach. In particular, dissonance is used on “The Wretched and the Vile” perhaps even more than before, but it fails to generate the sophisticated aura of modern black/death metal.
We have to remind that black/death metal does not imply just the righteous blasting rampage, to build a part of the song on a slow groove is quite in the spirit of Revenge, Black Witchery, Teitanblood, Archgoat and so on. Rituals of the Dead Hand just gave clear priority to this maneuver.
And then they’ve embraced blast-beat battering before, each of their previous albums contained one song with a blast-beat section at the beginning and end: “They Rode By Night” on “Blood Oath” and “Inception” on “With Hoof and Horn”.
So now they resort to accelerations much more often than before. The opening “The Restless Doomed” just picks up the pace a bit, but the second “Wij, Hoeren van Lucifer” begins with the blasting rampage, and although the next time we get a real blast-beat attack only in the fifth “De Gnijdige”, both “Ius Cruentationis” and “Mayhem and the Goat” contains fast-paced parts. The closing “Stigma Diabolicum” boasts brutally battering drums as well. The stop-start passages (“Wij, Hoeren van Lucifer”, “Mayhem and the Goat”, “Stigma Diabolicum”) also take away from the album the very same atmosphere of a measured plot – perhaps the only thing for which they could be credited with black/doom metal.
It is received wisdom that it is more difficult to maintain individuality at speed. The approach with which Rituals of the Dead Hand appears on “The Wretched and the Vile” is not much different from what we know about black/death metal: the songs are built on repetition as a rule, the riffs are dominated by inelaborate melodies – right, work in this genre does not require much variety. The music of Rituals of the Dead Hand is still atmospheric, but it is no longer as interesting and entrancing. There was more originality even on “Blood Oath”, and don’t even ask about “With Hoof and Horn” – it was a very piercing and sensitive work.
The album, of course, presses piercing lead lines into service (“Wij, Hoeren van Lucifer”, “Mayhem and the Goat”, “Stigma Diabolicum”), but they are not able to break the soulless black/death metal monolith up into pieces. “De Gnijdige”, perhaps the most revealing song on the album, contains one single innovation. Significantly, this figure has definitely not been used before: the rhythm guitar emits a low-frequency almost atonal hum – an effect that is astonishing in its gloominess, and completely in the style of black/death metal, yep. Unfortunately, it is spoiled by the kick drum triggers – it’s simply horrible, what’s the sound, it’s not even a drum machine, but some kind of clacker.
The vocal parts also indicate a departure from the previous central focus. Even the debut contained unusual vocal parts, strained screams gave weird emotionality to the songs. On the second album they became even more in the vein of Niklas Kvarforth, wile short passages of anthemic singing overtop of black metal enhanced the unusual atmosphere. Yes, the strained vocals are still used (“Ius Cruentationis”, “Mayhem and the Goat”, “De Gnijdige”, “Stigma Diabolicum”), but emotionally everything on “The Wretched and the Vile” is rather flat and pointless. If earlier growling spoiled piercing black metal passages, now it is totally in tune. In fact, death metal vocals killed all the charm, leaving no trace of piercingness.
Summary. Rituals of the Dead Hand have changed almost beyond recognition and for the worse, having lost all their originality. Perhaps, black/death metal aficionados may find some flavor on “The Wretched and the Vile”, but if “With Hoof and Horn” blew your mind back in the day, you’ll be disappointed, very disappointed. The band’s line-up, oddly enough, has not changed, but since Rituals of the Dead Hand’s members are involved in many other projects, perhaps they gave all their strength to them.
