“Where everything you love has burned between and at the seams.“
The emergence of lowheaven has been a quiet one. It would perhaps not have been noticed by many until this album rollout, including us. Therefore, lowheaven have that sense of an incoming salvo that you don’t hear until the lungs of it yell out until near impact. With their oppressive self-described post-metal sound, they’re a band who present a sound that is immediate but also complex. With many themes of social isolation, self-hatred, and acceptance explored, it makes Ritual Decay a beast of a record to explore, yet one that will lay its raptures within the mind.
There is an expansive sense to Ritual Decay as deep and heavy riffs are struck. With earlier openers “Chemical Pattern” and “Cancer Sleep” having a wave-like force, what lowheaven look to do from the outset is almost ensnare the listener within their sound, akin to what the likes of The Contortionist and Grayscale Season have done. To fully experience and embrace the record, there is an immediate sense that you have to traverse all it has to show across its ten tracks.
There is a force that persists throughout the record, even as it reaches the likes of “Mercy Death“, Ritual Decay continues to be unrelenting. There is a sense of grandiose to the record, which the likes of Arcane Roots, despite the difference in genre, also showcased. There are more technical moments too. “Amherst” is where lowheaven wrestle with more traditional metal moments. The gorgeous riffs at hand feel akin to what Tides Of Man would have produced, layered over with pertinent cleans. It’s at these moments that it feels like lowheaven are weaving a tapestry and moving between their heavier sections.
As lowheaven move through the latter half of Ritual Decay, their relentless wall of sound continues, touched with those more melodic moments. It’s a record to be wrangled with, as “Fucking Hell” is a wrath of riffs and a harsh wall of sound. It is a blunt instrument that lowheaven wield, as a reminder that perhaps the sharper edges of life should sound like that. Given that so many heavy bands seek to blunt off the edges of their sound in pursuit of a wider audience, this isn’t to say that lowheaven is just a superficially heavy group. There is a technical prowess shown on the likes of “Violence“, as cinematic riffs fill the track in its later moments.
With what they have done here, lowheaven shows their hand from the outset. It is a record that is meant to be abrasive, distorted, and unrelenting. It can perhaps give the feeling that these records are one-dimensional, yet the intensity that lowheaven provide feels like a welcomed horror. While perhaps not a shifting on any genre boundaries or beyond, lowheaven know what they are, and after all their years, there is a victory in that.
7/10
Ritual Decay is out August 29th and can be pre-ordered here.