This album may well be the definition of extreme.
Chaotic guitar - as much present for its randomly churning ambient atmosphere
as for any semblance of structured musical expression - combines perfectly
with the unrelenting skin-beating of session drummer Duane Timlin to provide
the necessary musical foliage for the flying, rending, shrieking spirit
of Lord Imperial to uproot and viciously explode asunder as he haunts
his personal forest of hatred. His vocals are almost unique in their tortured
entreaties and threatening malignance, for although bearing more than
just the occasional hint of Burzum's lost, forgotten, sad spirit; the
lyrics are for the most part perfectly audible and delivered in what is
very much his own style.
The material on this album is not all new - five tracks
are rerecorded versions of the music from Krieg's first release, The
Church; and later on we're also presented with a new version of "A
Crumbling Shrine" to name the most notable examples. Still, these
new versions are sufficiently different (and more importantly superior)
as to be more than worth owning for Krieg devotees.
As with all Krieg releases, each is utterly different
from the last (disregarding The Church, since Destruction Ritual
treats that MCD almost as a demo for its own music); and where Rise
of the Imperial Hordes is notable for its use of movie clips; subsequent
recordings made use of classical samples and monkish choirs to add a new
dimension of atmosphere to the Chaos Metal that is Krieg's trademark.
Personally, I miss those elements, which are almost entirely lacking on
this album, though there are a couple of choice clips which provide occasional
breaks in the mayhem. However, despite feeling The Church didn't
work anything like as well without those interludes, Destruction Ritual
is brutal enough to pull it off, and succeeds in creating an album of
Black Metal hatred based on chaos alone, untempered and unrelenting. Just
listen to the drumming - if you thought the two session musicians on The
Church were inhuman, you'll be forced to picture Timlin as some kind
of hideous, multi-limbed Lovecraftian nightmare. Best Black Metal release
from the US since Krieg's last one.
