Ritual Carnage are back with their very intense kind of retro-metal. Thrash at its best, its relentlessness is added to by the fact that none of the tracks seem to have the usual 2 second breathing space in between. It just keeps on coming, keeps on coming.

The stuff that comes is perhaps not the most contemporary, but it sounds good, it's well done, and somehow it conveys adherence to the true metal spirit. It may be back to metal roots that lie a decade or more behind us, but Ritual Carnage seem to have lifted the music of then into the now. There's even something that, to Ritual Carnage standards, you could call a 'ballad' of sorts: "Escape from the Light" features a few moments of clean singing and a peaceful intro, but later on just goes for the usual metal onslaught we've come to know and love.

Not too innovative, but surely damn worth buying.

RK

Written May 2000

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