Beats and yelling: Ceremonial Worship

Ceremonial Worship: Between Sleep and DeathOut 31st July on Eternal Death Undergoing something of an orchestral refit since their previous offering ‘Seven Gateways to Eternal Misanthropy’, the promo blurb accompanying this Greek’s outfit’s latest offering makes a lot of their…Greekness. And whilst they certainly do channel the intangible arcane sensation inherent to early Greek black metal, the bulk of this music looks more like the strife and fury of Gorgoroth, maintaining a captivating imposition on the listener as it weaves out frantic yet epic passages of melodically minimalist black metal threaded through with distinctively characterful riffs drawn as much from thrash as Nordic tremolo runs. Comparing the production to the previous effort is chalk and cheese. Whilst I praised the thin, near lawless delivery on ‘Seven Gateways to Eternal Misanthrope’, here Ceremonial Worship have upgraded their software in every sense of the word, to the point of almost feeling like a new entity…