Search - Ritual Carnage :: I Infidel

Douglas Hernandez | 09/04/2005

(2 out of 5 stars)

"It is unfortunate that the vocals on this release ruin the potential it has. It's unfortunate because Japan's Ritual Carnage plays a very accomplished style of thrash that is hard to find these days (no, Soilwork isn't thrash). The guitar riffing is of the highest quality, you can tell that these guys know Hell Awaits by heart, and the solos I heard were quite killer and placed in all the right spots. The drum playing is as equally impressive, changing into different tempos to avoid the sameness that most modern thrash albums fall trap to, and it adds a lot of color and dynamics to the music. If I were to judge this release by the instrumentation alone, it would get almost a perfect score. This avoids being retro in the sense that it loves ripping off the gods of yesteryear, and instead it injects you with direct, pure thrash songs. But as mentioned in the beginning of this review Dan Montgomery's semi-pitched whiny vocals are simply annoying! It is the impediment that takes away any intensity the material offers. Just picture a bad Geddy Lee imitator singing over Slayer-influenced thrash. It doesn't work."