One of several recent offerings from Sa Bruxa, the occult industrial alter ego of Italian artist Guiseppe Novella, a member of Italian black metal band Tundra. Here, Novella continues to deliver more high-quality ritualistic industrial steeped in spiritual undercurrents (like tht title suggests) and colored by classic death industrial influence.

Ritual's unsettling black ambience flows out over the sounds of a squalling infant, along in total darkness as eerie synth melodies and deep, rumbling drones unfurl in slow motion. Sa Bruxa's tendency towards prolix song titles is crucial to the bizarre imagery that the band conjures; that opener "Crawl Out Of The Mortal Spoil" first oozes through the air like some disturbed dungeon synth intro that never ends, until it does and everything suddenly morphs into a bone-cracking chaos of filthy industrial grime, distant distressing drones, and what sounds like a pack of slavering jaws tearing apart a carcass. That shift from blackened kosmische drift into the nightmare cacophony of the latter half is trademark Sa Bruxa, creating jarring transitions from infinite sprawls of electronic gloom and gorgeously dire minor-key melodies into mechanical hellscapes and monstrous loopscapes, often sprinkled with ceremonial sounds like chimes, bells, and percussive instruments. The whole album is horrific, a harrowing haunted nightscape that spreads out for over an hour, leading you blind through fully dread-filled aural apocalypse and ritualized repetition. You want mood? This album's got it, and it's a bad one. Onward through "Reverence The Beheaded (The Lightning Holding The Thunder In Its Arms)", guttural voices groan and sneer beneath growling electronics and distorted synthesizer, mysterious sounds and effects caught in a chromatic fever-dream of shimmering sound and immense subterranean ambience. Piercing synths sear the air as chantlike forms drift up from below, the stench of ozone and sulfur filling the space within each piece, clanking chains and unseen metallic objects dragged across dirt and concrete. Bilious bass notes burble beneath squiggles of vermiform sinewave, while ethereal guitar-like strum is heard in the background. More disinterred crypt sounds fill "As Serpent’s Sloughs”, possible field recordings of grave desecration occurring below washes of quasi-gothic guitar and demonic over-modulated vocals. Tribal drums and voudoun incantations echo through fields of undulating psychedelic keyboard, joined by lone blasts of some sacred horn, only to then dive into a pulsating black-tar mesmer of whirling prayer-bowl tones and ringing bells. The fusion of cold electronics and ancient acoustic instrumentation is sublime. "Inward Trance-like Contemplation (Through Svarna And Suspta)" and "Ritual Of Pure Awareness (The Goddess´ Blood Is The Wisdom)" both feature this balance at the heart of their death-worship exercises. Some of the electronic sounds could have come in from the darkest 70's-era German space music there are parts of this that are remarkably reminiscent of Klaus Schulze, for example), but there is so much rot and decay seeping up through the album that it smears all of that into something less distinguishable. Yet the ringing metal tones are crystalline, resonant pulses of light rising above the murk, growing more pronounced as the album moves through the hypnotic churn of "Sacrifice This Shroud Of Flesh" and "Transfiguration / Dissolution".

Supreme, breathtaking ghoulishness. It's appropriate that the band's name means "The Witch" in English; indeed, Ritual is dedicated to the ferocious headless goddess Devi Chinnamasta, enthralled in themes of sacrifice and the divine feminine in its most feral form. There is a dark power to Sa Bruxa's malignant soundcraft here. Musically, it shares a familiar vibe with artists like Funerary Call, Herbst9, Emit, Shibalba, Equimanthorn, even T.O.M.B. to an extent, but the presence of sickening power electronics and heavy death industrial elements alongside those odd dakwave-like melodies and assorted other strangeness goes a long way to separate this from the pack.

Limited to two hundred hand-numbered copies.