Hey there tech-fiends! Before we get started, I premiered a new song yesterday by tech-death/symphonic black metal act Enthean that you can jam here. Today we're premiering two new songs by Australian tech-death wizards The Ritual Aura, and each of them features a guest spot by a famous tech-death musician to boot! While I didn't cover The Ritual Aura's album Laniakea here at MI last year, that was merely due to how much I'd already covered it and helped the band premiere songs from it already over at nocleansinging.com where I also write. Fortunately though, Laniakea spread like wildfire in the tech-death community and the band definitely gained a lot of new fans and admiration with its release.
Both "Ghostgate" and "I Am No Longer I?" premiering below will appear on their sophomore full-length, Tæther, due out November 11th through Lacerated Enemy Records. The art featured for these singles was bought for the singles and is not the art for the upcoming album. But it's a damn cool piece!
The first song we have for you today is "Ghostgate", a strange hybridized mix between tech and prog ideas aided by phenomenal guest appearances from: Malcolm Pugh ripping a guitar solo (Inferi, A Loathing Requiem, Entheos) at 4:14-5:03, additionally; Drew Griffiths from Ur Draugr reprises his guest role on clean vocals for the chorus sections. To my ears, "Ghostgate" really sees The Ritual Aura branching out and crafting a more expansive and epic sound, even going as far to introduce some ripping black metal riffing and orchestral/synth overlay on top of all the shifts between tech-death and prog death that the song traverses hyper-actively.
Next we have the strangely named "I Am No Longer I?" to show you today as well! While the song does contain some orchestral/synth additions like "Ghostgate", the sonic experience here is quite a bit different from that song. It's a different flavor, with a different flow and pacing to it. It's actually pretty chill and graceful from the onset for a bit until imploding into shredding technical fury. Which then segues into an excellent fretless bass guest appearance by Linus Klausenitzer (Obscura, Alkaloid). After jamming both songs quite a bit, I'm pretty excited by the new direction The Ritual Aura are going in, if you haven't already, like them on Facebook and check out their Bandcamp! As always, prior editions of this series can all be viewed here.
