Rtitual - "Ritual" Review

Artist: Ritual
Title: Ritual
Label: InsideOut Music
Date: 1995/2004

Offical band website

Tracks:

1. Wingspread

2. The Way of Things

3. Typhoons Decide

4. A Little More Like Me

5. Solitary Man

6. Life Has Just Begun

7. Dependence day

8. Seasong For Moominpappa

9. You Can Never Tell

10. Big Black Secret

11. Power Place

The Review:

Ritual’s excellent debut cd from the mid-nineties has been reissued by InsideOut Music after a short time of being OOP. This is was a pleasant surprise to me when it arrived in my mail since it was OOP. Now that it’s been reissues, even remastered, the fan’s can now get all the lyrics and band photos in the booklet.

The best way to descibe Ritual is a combination of old school prog ala Yes, Jethro Tull, and Gentle Giant adding some hard rock ala Queen and Led Zepplin combined with some modern Swedish sounds of The Flower Kings, Anglagard, and even Kaipa (of which Patrick sang on the last two studio releases from IOM). Ritual mixes prog and rock together in such a fashion that it’s hard to tell which era they’re from. Meaning they have the 70's feeling throughout the disc but with a modern production. Almost as if they were around in the 70's and didn’t start recording until now. My favorites off this disc are opener,"Wingspread", "Typhoons Decide" and "Big Black Secret", which could be Ritual’s signature sound and it’s a modern days symphonic masterpiece that includes some great heavy guitar riffs at the finale.

This debut, in my opinion is their best so far, although I have yet to hear their second CD. It contains a well centered mix.of prog, folk, hard rock, and medieval sounds. This is truly a classic release that should get to more audiences now that they’re on InsideOut Music. This IS very recommended release that needs to be in every fan's collection.

Reviewed by Ron Fuchs on January 13th, 2004

Reviewed Discography

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