Year: 2021/2026
Label: Antyscena/Zoharum

This is a massive album. No beating around the bush: Polish Wieloryb’s Ritual in Zoharum’s expanded edition is massive to the point of being ludicrous. With three bonus tracks, this edition has a running time of almost 70 minutes.

And, as we shall see, that is a lot. Especially with music such as on Ritual.

Wieloryb, who’ve been active since the mid-90’s, operate on the more rhythmically inclined edge of the industrial spectrum. Usually, they’re grouped in with rhythmic noise or power noise, but you could throw around words like techno and maybe even EBM for reference. In other words, heavily percussion reliant, none too abrasive music is the order of the day.

Ritual’s approach is decidedly singular and uncompromising. Almost all tracks, with the exception of the ambient Echoes In The Night consist of a powerful, dominant and repetitive percussive loop. The beat is front and center in the music, constituting both the backbone and the most prominent element. Around the heavy, industrially inorganic pound of the machine drum Wieloryb build atmosphere with typically atonal layers of cold, mechanic, industrial synths. These are mostly very rudimentary and stripped down, very much relegated to a secondary, supporting role.

The potential problem with Ritual is, to circle back to the beginning, the sheer massiveness of the album. 70 minutes of this kind of music, where lack of development or modulation means a jarring monotony, easily becomes too much.

To Wieloryb’s immense credit, there’s something in this music that keeps the repetitiveness from becoming monotone in a dulling way. It’s amazing how a 70-minute slab of this kind of rather straightforward, rather static music can pack a punch that doesn’t peter out halfway.

Why is that? Why does Ritual succeed (although with some reservations)? It’s not in something that can easily be pointed out. Sure, the percussive loops are powerful and dominating in their static, unrelenting power. Sure, the production values are on point here: Ritual sounds good. But it’s not that – at least not just that. It’s in the nuances, in the subtle but important details of the layers of industrial ambience and the way the different percussive elements are layered in the mix.

Ritual captures the dark, and ominous soul of this kind of industrial music. The inhuman, unrelenting beat of a machine heart; the cold, inorganic sound of the machine flexing its cogwheel muscles. Is it a cyberpunk vision or a technological dystopia? Who knows – there are elements of both on Ritual.

But still: Ritual remains a hefty piece of music to sit through. I mean… have I already said it’s got a running time of 70 minutes? And it’s both monotonous and often static? Both points bear repeating, because despite the positive things I said above, Ritual is an album that to some extent suffers from its massiveness. There’s a good music on here, but there’s just a bit too much of it…

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