This is the fourth album from The Ritual Aura, a death metal band from Australia.
I enjoyed 2015’s Laniakea and 2016’s colossal Tæther, but I never realised until recently that they also had a 2019 album, (Velothi), that I’ve never heard. Well, Heresiarch offers a great opportunity to see what The Ritual Aura are up to in 2023. With a new lineup since I last caught up with them, (including a member of Tómarúm), and 56 minutes of new material, what does Heresiarch assail us with?
The Ritual Aura play tech death that’s ambitious and far-reaching. The music covers a range of different bases – brutal, atmospheric, gloomy, dazzling, epic, aggressive, jazzy, orchestral, to name but a few – all wrapped up in a modern technical death metal package that’s well-realised and professionally rendered. This is a band that know their art intimately, and the music is accomplished and professional.
The level of technical skill you’ll encounter on Heresiarch is impressive, as you’d expect. Across the many head-snapping riffs, bright melodies, and ostentatious solos The Ritual Aura weave a colourful and textured world of expressive tech death wizardry. I like the frequent atmospheric aspects that appear throughout the album, whether this is an embedded orchestral element or a separate fully fledged event – Soulrending Materiae is a beautiful example of this, but not the only one.
Heresiarch contains a lot of content that will be sure to have a select slice of tech death fans obsessing over it for some time to come. It’s a quality album that’s clearly been a labour of love, and offers discerning aficionados of the style an enjoyable feast of technical and atmospheric worldbuilding.
Highly recommended.
Wonderbox Metal 