Rating: 8.5

Country: Finland

Genre: Ritualistic Black Metal

Record Label: Northern Heritage

Release Date: 2007

Track list:
1. Disturbed By Spiritual Tormentors
2. Eternal Woman (Hell Of Your Love)
3. The Vision Remains
4. Initation Interrupted
5. Death Of The Feeble Masses
6. Crush The King Of Snakes
7. We Rise Above
8. Commands From The Antichrist
9. Crawl In The Mud
10. Erotic Needs In Emotional Void

Band Website: Ride for Revenge

Ride for Revenge - The King of Snakes

Harald Mentor - instruments, vocals
Spirit Krusher - instruments

In a genre where "progression" has somehow come to mean slicking up production and decorating songs with extraneous electronic bullshit, there will always be a place for naturalists who paint in bold, passionate strokes with little regard for form. Ride For Revenge are a testament to that. The band's genre, of course, has always been subject to debate; this album's murky, percussive aesthetic lands it closer to doom metal territory (the most obvious modern comparison being the similarly tribal stoner jamming of Om) to the casual ear, but fundamentally I'd say the band subscribes to a distinctly meditative variant of the Beherit school of black metal, maintaining their shamanistic approach, but discarding the abrasive, Blasphemy-worshipping guitar attack in favor of bass-heavy, metronomic grooves.

The drummer gives a compelling, nearly hypnotic performance, but the oft-praised rhythmic complexity of this band is basically a smokescreen; the only variation here exists in light cymbal details mutating around a single time signature that seems to try to match your pulse, with the occasional vulgar interjection of an irrelevant deconstruction. There are exceptions, like the trippy, polyrhythmic stupor of "Erotic Needs in Emotional Void," but primal incessance is the band's most indispensable tool. Admittedly, the songs' binary nature does render their length arbitrary; they seem to end whenever the fuck they feel like it.

Is this all as overwhelmingly minimalistic as it sounds? Yes, to its benefit; nothing echoes the halls of eternity quite like simplicity. A constant splatter of spacey FX provides chilling ambient detail, though, and the manner in which the music parts to the will of the lyrical narrative reinforces the band's technique as more of a storytelling one than of static atmosphere. The vocalist gruffly narrates, sometimes seemingly pleads into the void with a petulant rasp, answered only by his own reverberation. The dull, throbbing low end trudges on. Nightmare-fuel.

Ultimately, The King of Snakes sounds like Beherit's Drawing Down the Moon driven insane after being strapped down and forced to listen to Hellhammer for weeks straight; the ritualism of one consequently merges with the crusty pounding of the other in occult sludge of somnambulant rhythm and tarblack atmosphere. You probably don't need this album because its appeal is so narrow, but assuming you're on its wavelength, it is music that seems to whisper threats directly to the id.

February 25th, 2009