Grave Ritual - Euphoric Hymns from the Altar of Death (2010)

   Grave Ritual debuted with an obscure and strongly Incantation influenced album, that's similar to their main influental band, wasn't so easy to go into.
   Compared to Incantation, "Euphoric Hymns from the Altar of Death" focused more on the old school themes, and even though it's not so raw and complex, still the heavy sound and the rotting feeling makes it sure to keep it unfriendly. The guitar themes are quite Incantation-like, and speed switches are common enough to make it difficult to determine any preferences, so it's quite a unified mass. The way how they worked on simple leading melodies by pushing them though on various possibilites of disharmony, resulted a well composed album. The main themes are following and complying to the speed switches from slow, obscure heaviness to middle speed and to intense hammering. These solutions making main view quite diverse, even though the sound that makes suspect that the album was recorded in some dungeon deep underground, definitely took from the effectiveness of diversity. But still, it was also a rational intention, to keep the album unified and putrid sounding as possible. Exciting record provided by newbies of the New Wave of Old School Death Metal.