AN NCS PREMIERE: FORBIDDEN RITES — “JUDGEMENT”

 

A twenty-year gestation produces an unusually long wait for a new musical offspring, but in the case of Forbidden Rites it has produced some unusually good new music, rooted in the era when the early seed was planted but benefitting from the passage of time as well.

Under a different name, the band was first begun in 1996 by Mexican guitarists Carlos Martinez and Raúl Campos and drummer Hugo Olivos (Vomitile, ex-Inhearted), but two decades would pass before the band came back to life, this time joined by longtime friend Vlad Marin (ex-Xiuhtecuhtli) on vocals and bass. The results of their collaboration are encompassed by a debut album of black/death metal named Pantheon Arcanum, and in the run-up to its release by GrimmDistribution on November 7th, we’re premiering a track named “Judgement“.

 

 

GrimmDistribution recommends Pantheon Arcanum for fans of Dissection, Sacramentum, Lord Belial, and Necrophobic — and you’ll understand why when you hear “Judgement”.

The music here is a changing experience. At first it’s high-speed and white-hot, an alternating sequence of blazing riffs over a bubbling bass and battering percussion, and more bleak but still seething guitars accompanied by a less brutalizing drum rhythm. The song’s savagery is amplified by the kind of livid, barbaric vocals that conjure visions of a fanged nightmare coming for your throat. After a bridge, the music accelerates even further in an episode of jet-fast drum blasting and soaring guitar mania.

But the band make a further change, in which the music becomes morbid and melancholy before surging again, only to subside again into a gloomy, rhythmically lurching movement, which leads into an eerie instrumental finale in which bewitching crystalline guitar notes ring out over a deep, craggy bass line and skull-busting drums.

 

Drums for the album, which will be released in a jewel-case CD edition with an 8-page booklet, were recorded at Steel Fortress Studio in Nicosia (Cyprus), and guitars, bass, and vocals were recorded at Sound Village Studio in Toluca (Mexico). The album was mixed at Sound Village Studio and mastered in Germany by Andy Classen (Rotting Christ, Asphyx, Krisiun) at Stage One Studios.

The lyrics for the songs were drawn from the letters of Alonso Guzman (a well-known Mexican writer and a longtime friend of the band) and Sergio Campos. The cover art was created by Riaj Gragoth at Luciferium War Graphics.

And now, get ready to be ravaged by “Judgement” — and by a previously released track, “The Defeat of Man By Man” (which is free to download at Bandcamp).

PRE-ORDER:
https://grimmdistribution.bandcamp.com/album/030gd-forbidden-rites-pantheon-arcanum-2018

FACEBOOK:
http://www.facebook.com/forbidden.rites

TRACK LIST:
01. Human Mortuary Landscapes
02. Reborn
03. Slavery Before The Soma
04. Judgement
05. Now That The Moon Illuminates The Remains
06. We Are Your Sinister
07. The Hope Of The Abandoned Planet
08. The Defeat Of Man By Man
09. Arcane Initiation
Length – 42:20