Track Of The Day RITUAL LOVERS
While the ongoing war still insanely rages and clangs, the two former bandmates in Rivne-based, Ukrainian Post-punk outfit Cold Comfort, Alex (Dikkät) and Eugene (Bedroom Talks), a.k.a. Ritual Lovers continue in what they do best, “a mix of beauty and goth cold music influenced by Coldwave, Darkwave, EBM, Post-punk, and Gothic Rock”.
The duo’s first 5-track EP, titled, with a clever play on words, “Sombre Rawmantique” triggers an unsettling cold, yet seething sonic vortex brimming with sore melancholy, in which to be engulfed into a murky, deadly wasteland, torn apart by the bottomless cracks inflicted by an overwhelming convulsive and excruciating spiral of throbbing, clattering and resonant, equally visceral and somehow ‘human’, synthetic sounds that explore the abysses of an eternal wintry night of the soul, stabbed and lashed by rattling, shifting industrial rhythm patterns, rugged droning low ends and sweeping lacerating synths, whilst the profoundly despairing and harrowing tones of the voice seem to resonate endlessly in all-embracing darkness of an impending doom.
While we already had an in-depth analysis of the clanging and agonizing mid-tempo debut single, “Silent Echoes”, the 5-tracker wanders from the crisp and stark repetitive drum beats and the simmering apocalyptic aura of the opening furrowed by “Distant Memories”, to the convulsive and shuffling clattering percussion patterns, topped by the eerie swells of buzzing riffs to sink ruthlessly “In the Gloom”, this latter, due its magmatic rhythmic work, with the achingly mesmerizing following, “Touch your hand”, my favourite parts.
Driving rumbling and buzzing basslines, punctuated by hypnotic punchy snares, pulse steadily encompassed by a tragic phantasmagoria of ceremonial synths, bulging with swirling epicness and lacerating romantic beauty, flashing desolately around a painfully haunted lonely heart, amid ominous baritone broods, with sad spoken words and light aching cries, longing “To Touch Your Hand”, once more.
Obscure bleeding introspections, in the final “Lurid Sun”, quiver on a hallucinated yet heartbreaking and solemn last elegy, while a restless fog dissolves illuminated by the lurid effulgence of a black sun that radiates enveloping frost.
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