I like death metal. I like electronic music. I like when musicians cross boundaries and blend genres unexpectedly. And I really dig the new LP from AntiMozdeBeast, The Ritual. It's an album with a simple enough concept- what if you took acid house, ran all the bass parts through a filter to make them sound like ghosts trapped in a florescent lightbulb, and then layered vicious death vocals on top? Well, I'll tell you, you'd get The Ritual- an album that sounds like an afterparty social in the Cenobite's dimension from Hellraiser II. I've always liked the bleached and boney quality that acid house can acquire with the right gear, but I never thought it could compliment the carnivorous cry of a death howl quite so well. "Masquerade of Death" literally sounds like you are attempting to climb over a heap of bones to escape a subterranean den, as a pack of demonically possessed hyenas fight and bawl in the dark, just beyond your line of sight. "Sins of The Muse" is introduced with an industrial grind beat that subsides in order to force you to lumber on foot through a series of gothic vignettes guided by the rotten tether of a grim organ melody. Most satisfyingly, though, opener "Time is Our Enemy, Time is God" has a really tight rhythm and sense of timing, aspects that aid in cultivating a deliciously anxious mood, feeling the climax of a rave that had been tensely awaiting the arrival of the Mask of the Red Death, who proceeds to reduce all the revealers in attendance to inverted pools of bubbling, fermenting human flavored jelly. I think AntiMozdeBeast has the potential to do more with the raw materials put to use on The Ritual than what we see here, but for what's it's worth, this is really working for me.
