Terminal with Benefits opens like a horror movie. Alessandro Incorvaia’s bass drops a series of harsh slaps, David Thair’s drums lock in tight underneath, and Okala Elesia’s guitar cuts across the top with what he calls “buzzsaw tone and phasers set to stun”. Then the scene collapses. What follows is a chaotic nightmare in the shape of a noise-rock record. Noise, angular attack, and post-hardcore instinct sit as separate reference points at first, then bleed into one form as the record moves.
London noise-punk stalwarts Ritual Error follow 2024’s Dial in the Ghost (TNS Records) with their sophomore album on Totality on September 25th. First single “New Slime” is out today, with a David Loh directed video via Totality’s channel. “Hung Up on a Clown” follows on September 4th. The three-piece recorded with Wayne Adams (who has previously recorded USA Nails, KlΓ€mp and Big Lad) at Bear Bites Horse between October and December 2025.
They wrote the record in what Okala describes as a “windowless, claustrophobic practice space in a factory-turned-cheap-artist-studios on London’s storied Cable Street”.
The building itself, in his description: “a confused identity – in turns indifferent, sinister, and run by a shitty landlord who doesn’t wear trousers – yet cut with moments of domesticity and community. A fittingly liminal location and one that feels much rarer to inhabit in the London of the 2020s.”
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They knew early that the songs sat differently from the debut. “Meaner, louder, darker,” Okala says. “Like a cinema hot dog.” One night after practice, packing up in the same windowless room, he asked the rest of the band the question that turned into the shape of the whole record: “what if it’s just noise-rock?”
Dial in the Ghost looked back at what they grew up on: Unwound, Hoover, Drive Like Jehu. Terminal with Benefits does the opposite. Okala calls it “the more wiry, nastier stuff we listen to as adults with mental health issues, in a country gleefully slipping backwards into mandatory golly wog possession.”
It took a year to write. A month before they were due at Bear Bites Horse, they realised they still needed five more songs. The last stretch happened in a blur. Riffs got developed and discarded with abandon. Feedback compressed down to “Yeah”, “no”, and “Fuck off. Too poppy”. The freshness carried through into the songs themselves. They go on the attack.
Sometimes they just made cutthroat gestures at each other. Old habits die hard though. David summed it up best: “It’s recommended to write new stuff in 7/4 just 3 days before recording.”
Wayne Adams recorded, mixed and mastered the record at Bear Bites Horse.
Terminal with Benefits pushes the band into new abrasive territory while keeping the precision and tension that defined Dial in the Ghost. Alessandro’s abrasive bass tone and David’s frantic, precise drumming build an off-kilter rhythm section. Okala’s guitar slashes in and out of the space they leave. The vocals sit somewhere between shout and scream, adding colour to the void with news about sexual alien abductions, an island state obsessed with 12-foot immigrants, and booking agents who turn themselves into tattoos to please their clients. The record assaults the senses and stays tightly controlled throughout. This is noise-rock filtered through JG Ballard and every Touch and Go band you can think of, brought into 2026 with the original edges kept and new ones added.
The tracklist runs Tapeworm, Hung Up on a Clown, Domestic Pattern, Family Plot, (Instrumental), New Slime, Prospective Joke, Sexual Surrogate, and The Worst Is Still To Come.
Ritual Error are Okala Elesia (guitar, vocals, synths), Alessandro Incorvaia (bass, backing vocals, synths), and David Thair (drums). Artwork by Daniel Holloway. Terminal with Benefits is out September 25th on Totality. Pre-order at Totality’s Bandcamp.
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