Cost: $1.99
Previously the only Ritual Carnage album I heard/owned was The Highest Law, so skipping right to this was quite a departure from that debut...especially with the vocals here. We'll get to that. Most of the death metal overtones and influences are gone, and the sound is slicker, cleaner, a bit more technical, and less overtly old school sounding.
I'm curious to know what the hell happened with the vocals. Let's not pretend otherwise--they're wimpy sounding. They're nasal and sound unnaturally high, like perhaps they were tinkered with/processed in some way, and then the delivery itself seems stilted. I suppose to a certain broad "weird vocals in thrash" degree they could be compared to Sean Killian's, but I don't mind the Vio-lence vocals that much. These are far more monotonous, distracting, and weird in a negative way.
The vocal style is so ridiculous I actually went to Youtube to listen to the 2nd and 3rd albums just to see if it was a gradual change or not. The vox on the 2nd album are like the debut. The Birth of Tragedy vocals shifted to a tough talk style, and while they don't have the highness, they do have that same somewhat artificial/overproduced feel.
The music itself pretty straightforward contemporary thrash, ie a modernized take on classic influences. So it's not '80s emulation, but they haven't succumbed to groove or Panteraisms. A couple sections bring to mind newer/00s+ Sodom, with more intricate lead/solo work. It may be partially because of their shift to a cleaner production style, but in general this has a feeling similar to the better thrash reunion albums. There's an obvious homage to "Hell Awaits" at 0:18 of the title track, and one of the riffs in "Twilight of the All Too Human" is a sped-up "War Ensemble" riff.
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