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Rating: A sunless, dark and gloomy day... with memories of lost loved ones that, like a scourge, drive you to write and weep uncontrollably... perhaps these are the most uncompromising intentions of Rites, the Italian one-man band who, after a debut in the under-niche of stoner doom (the EP “Demonology”), are now ready to bring forth the demons of sadness and the disastrous and ineffable events of life with this “Letter To D(E)ad,” another EP with just two tracks for twenty-four minutes and forty-nine seconds of pure depressive black metal—but not the kind made up of frenzied, full-throttle blast beats. Here, we are faced with a depressing, ossianic, marshy and crushing funeral sludge doom metal. Made up of black metal-style screams that ring loudly in the listener’s ears, evoking the glory days of suicidal black metal bands from the early 2000s such as Shining, Forgotten Tomb, Silencer, Nortt, Xasthur, and the genre’s founders and forerunners, Bethlehem.
Letter To D(E)ad, the first track, digs deep with its horrific sensations of grief and death over its fifteen harrowing minutes. While the second track, “Letter To My Brother Frank” (nine minutes), the voice becomes a rasp, an incomprehensible mumble that frightens the listener’s mind.
An album, “Letter To D(E)ad”, which over the course of its twenty-four minutes proves cacophonous and disjointed, raw and instinctive.
Recommended to almost no one, but is there anyone who could possibly appreciate such a sonic rot and its leaden themes?
For those who wish to listen, it is available on major streaming platforms (Spotify, Youtube Music, Amazon Music... and others). For everyone else, better steer clear.
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