Copenhagen’s blackened hardcore ensemble ANTI RITUAL recently announced their return with their second offering and first full length album ‘Expel The Leeches’ alongside the release of album’s first single and video ‘Monetary Man’. Today, the band shares a second single ‘The Oppressive Weight’ that is accompanied by a video once again by visual artist Morten Grønnegaard (Rising, Kristian Harting).
The song is a lamentation for our troubled earth and our children’s seemingly bleak future living on it, with lyrics stating: When I look into their eyes, all I see is bliss. Unaware of what’s in store for us all. Ecosystems fall to their knees. Waiting for the axe to fall. One more species extinct. One less day till our time is up. And it breaks my heart that this is the world we made for them. A rotting globe. We wrote this song for our children as an apology – an epitaph. A testament that we tried to save it. That we did our best, and failed. We should have destroyed the corporations that lay barren our home.
ANTi RITUAL has just announced two Danish release shows in Copenhagen and Aarhus with label mates Nyt Liv, as well as a release party (no live show) on the release day taking place at WarPigs BrewPup in Copenhagen. The dates are:
29.10.21 – Copenhagen, WarPigs BrewPub (release party)
26.11.21 – Copenhagen, Underwerket (w. Nyt Liv)
03.12.21 – Aarhus, Headquarters (w. Nyt Liv)
ANTI RITUAL’s debut album ‘Expel The Leeches’ consists of ten tracks of churning, pissed off, blackened hardcore, delivering a caustic commentary on the state of the world. While Anti Ritual draws on death metal, black metal, grind as well as hardcore to create its furious aesthetic, the band thematically emphazises the potential of aggressive music as being a political endeavour and furthermore its function as a cathartic cleanser for those involved.
Topics like modern capitalism, the many guises worn by the rising fascism, the fear of environmental collapse and the world we are leaving behind for future generations fuels this furious, yet dynamic record. The central drive behind the songs has once again been to find a constructive outlet for the less than optimistic outlook greeting anyone who cares to look up from their screens. These songs were written by Anti Ritual to help cope and to help put words to what surrounds us all.
As with ANTI RITUAL’s 2014 self-titled debut EP, the record is not meant as a pessimistic testament though. The sheer vitriol and passion poured into the making of these songs stem from a desire to make positive use of our anger and frustration. It is a way to ward off total apathy and the slow but certain descent into the indifference that covers every inch of postmodern society. An apathy that now threatens our very existence as a species.
‘Expel The Leeches’ is recorded and produced by the band itself, mastered by Brad Boatright (Nails, Sleep, From Ashes Rise a.o.) and bears artwork by Morten Grønnegaard and Nikolaj Borg. The album is set for a release on vinyl and digital formats on October 29th 2021 through Indisciplinarian, and the vinyl edition limited to 300 black copies is now available for pre-orders through Indisciplinarian web store.
