Consummation (AUS) - 'Ritual Severance' Cassette

Limited to 200 Copies and encompassing two tracks in 21 minutes, Ritual Severance is a gibbering maw of intensity and tension. The songwriting’s serpentine and slipstreaming, the execution’s crazed and commanding, the recording’s raw yet rounded; Consummation take viscous bestiality and give it leathery dragon-wings of atmosphere. And yet, for all the lurking menace across Ritual Severance, there’s a striking amount of nuance in kind, the quintet keenly knowing when to scale back the attack and let the sinister energies simmer. As such, these two tracks feel more focused and shorter than their fairly epic lengths; not surprisingly, their respective titles – “The Weightless Grip of Fire” and “Blighted Ovum” – vividly illustrate the music’s central contents.