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lowheaven announce debut album, Ritual Decay: “We’re not a happy listen…”
Toronto post-metallers lowheaven are dropping their debut album Ritual Decay in the summer, with crushing new single Chemical Pattern out now.
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Album review: lowheaven – Ritual Decay
Heaviness is a rite for Toronto post-metallers lowheaven, a power harnessed wholly on their mesmerically crushing debut...
- Words:
- Sam Law
Self-professedly, lowheaven are not “a happy listen”. Preferring to be defined by their asphyxiating emotional intensity rather than any conventional genre bounds, the Toronto crew came together under the early shadow of the COVID pandemic and have spent the last five years festering and congealing an obliterating brand of blackened noise. Elements of screamo stand out in their cataclysmic swirl. The textural density of post-metal is a reference point, too. Mostly, crushing first LP Ritual Decay is the low sound of anguish made loud.
Recorded in a centuries-old New Jersey church – as was 2023 EP Collapse – while watching David Cronenberg body horrors and similarly twisted cinematic offerings, it is possible to glean meaning from songs like Chemical Pattern, Nothing Else Frail and Mercy Death. As soon as we’re born, we’re dying. Life’s milestones are ultimately ceremonial markers on an irresistibly downward spiral. Panic at finding yourself on that hopeless ride pervades In Grievance and Fucking Hell with a steely chill and the coppery taste of blood.
Lyrically, there is greater depth, more pointed suffering – and, ultimately, even glimpses of acceptance. Cancer Sleep grapples poignantly with the pained internalisation of human existence: ‘We shift, retry / And move to the left of guilt / And pride / Empty deny.’ Amherst, meanwhile, stows the coldest, bleakest messaging the record amongst its glassiest, most purely melancholy sounds: A man withdrawn from hope resides in all / A cascade of regret / The taunts of chemicals / And so we deny / To create false harmony.’ In that sense, they can mix it with screamo greats Touché Amoré and Defeater just as well.
Misery loves company. There will surely be a fanbase ready to luxuriate in the expertly captured suffering folded over and over into these songs. But, more impressively, as we pound through penultimate track Violence_ and into the massive Manic Grace, this is an album capable of pulling even the cheeriest listeners into its hypnotic tailspin – then hurling them out on a wave of catharsis, feeling all the more alive on the other side.
Verdict: 4/5
For fans of: Converge, Grief Ritual, Oathbreaker
Ritual Decay is out now via MNRK Heavy