Release year: 2024
Label: Ambirial Mvsic Productions/Misantropia Records

According to a statement included in the booklet of this album, Enter The Seasonal Ritual is, and I quote, “more a soundtrack to an unmade folk horror film rather than a conventional album.” Further, the text lists acts such as proto-neofolk legends Changes and the folkier moments of Amon Düül I and Amon Düül II as influences alongside with, for example, the soundtrack to the seminal folk horror movie The Wicker Man.

In a way, this statement/description is both a blessing and a curse for the album. A blessing in the sense that it helps to understand the conceptual and creative context of the album; a curse in the sense that it creates certain expectations and assumptions as to the music itself that the album fails to meet.

How much importance should one place upon the description of the album as a soundtrack to a movie as yet unmade? Have these tracks been composed with certain scenes or events in mind? Is there some kind of unrevealed narration and dramatic arch that ties these tracks together? I do not know.

Ultimately however, there undeniably is a certain soundtrack-like nature to the compositions on this album. And, sadly, to its detriment in this case. You see, an all-too-common flaw with soundtracks as independent pieces of music is that they are composed with the movie and the scenes in mind: they enhance and support the scenes they are heard in. But when heard without the context of the movie, too often score compositions lack an integral element, the “narration”, if you will, of the scene.

And when viewed from the soundtrack perspective, this is exactly where The Cult Of Sunlight stumble. The compositions are rather ambient in nature in the sense that there’s very little progression or development in them, and very few hooks to capture the listener’s attention. For the most part, each track introduces its musical and instrumental theme within seconds, and continues to repeat it with only minor developments throughout their duration. A new instrument layer may be added and one removed, but the tracks mostly go nowhere, and have few attention grabbing melodic centerpieces.

Continuing with the soundtrack analogy, these pieces are missing the scene they should come with. Another comparison I heard is that this is an album full of intros, outros and interludes without the actual tracks – a bit too harshly said, but not totally off the mark.

Sadly, there’s another shortcoming on the album, which is its sound.

Musically, I really don’t hear much of Changes or the psych folk of Amon Düül I/II here, but the folk horror epithet does hit home. Tender, calm acoustic guitars, soaring string arrangements, tense plucked strings, occasional tribalistic percussions; all of these create images of pagan serenity with sometimes more, sometimes less prominent sinister undercurrents. I could certainly see these tracks work in a folk horror movie.

Were it not for the sound. I’m assuming all of the strings (and most other instruments) are synthesized, which is perfectly fine. However, their sound is a bit too obviously artificial and on the nose. The same goes for the acoustic guitars: I don’t know if they too are created with virtual instruments, but at the very least, the effects used make them sound like they were. And considering the central role the guitar has on a great many tracks, this is a pretty damning flaw. It renders the sound of the album plastic.

I’m not against using synthesized, virtual instruments. Hell, that’s how I make my own music. But, now we return to the first paragraphs and where the album booklet statement condemns the album: in positioning itself next to Changes, Amon Düül I/II and classic folk horror soundtracks, The Cult Of Sunlight creates a context for this album that the sound fails to match. One expects an organic, natural sound, against which this rather plastic sound stands in too stark contrast.

Together, these two flaws – static compositions and artificial sound – put too many sticks in the album’s wheels. There certainly is potential in the concept, but this time around the execution fails to actualize it. In a way, Enter The Seasonal Ritual feels like a rough sketch or a demo of a body of material that through further work could become something worthwhile.

I’ve listened to this album copious amounts, trying to find some redeeming factor that would overshadow these flaws and enable me to say something like “Despite these flaws, thanks to Magical Factor X, this album lands on the right side of good” – but, alas, I cannot. Enter The Seasonal Ritual is not hopeless or a hack album. In this state, it’s just a bit too raw, like an unripe apple, for pleasant consumption.

And as so, despite a review that is far more of the negative than the positive, I would not object to hearing another album by this project, were it to showcase evolution and progress in the two fields discussed above.

The Cult Of Sunlight doesn’t seem to have an online presence; visit Misantropia Records’ webshop for more info