Location: Portland, Oregon
Country: USA
Genre: Psychedelic occult rock
Full length: Psychedelic Hell
Format: Digital, cassette (limited to 100 copies) (sold out)
Label: Hidden Hand Records (Mexico)
Release date: October 13, 2023
In three years, Satanic Ritual Glorification developed a sound that can't be categorised. "Psychedelic Hell" is not metal, hard rock, psychedelic rock, goth rock, glam rock, or progressive in the conventional sense. It's rather a diverse, phantasmagorical synthesis of rock, jazz, blues, psychedelia, funk, surf rock, show tunes, burlesque, and carnivalesque merrymaking presented with a circuslike atmosphere.
Through esoteric themes framed in an engrossing musical framework, it unpredictably cuts through the commonplace and mundane, building a world of curiosity and unorthodoxy. For an obscure indie band, they’ve done well by advertising and streaming at Facebook, Youtube, Bandcamp, and a few other outlets. A number of their releases are selling out without so much as a bio, advertising campaign, or official site as far as I'm aware. Their secrecy and ambiguity are as much a part of their appeal as the bizarre, enigmatic characteristics of their music and the forbidden nature of their subject matter.
Before the first Black Sabbath album, a band called Coven fused underground rock with diabolic legend and dark rituals in much the same way as this band. The difference here is that Satanic Ritual Glorification embodies the rituals Coven sang about. Their releases are more like rituals celebrating the darker sides of childhood stories, nursery rhymes and folk legends, which represent malevolent forces you can't help feeling curious about (this is why “Rosemary's Baby’ and “The Exorcist” still have cult audiences, and “The First Omen” and “Late Night with the Devil” are well received today).
This album brings these tales to life in an anganging manner. You feel you're reading a vintage Gold Key comic, watching a 1970s occultsploitation movie, traversing a boardwalk haunted attraction, and listening to an outrageously eccentric acid jazz-rock fusion with horror, mystery, entertainment, and a certain amount of wit playing on the media’s misreading of the occult and the resulting “satanic panic”. Through the ritual they set their music to, everything you need to know about the band is revealed as they perform nuanced invocations to everything caliginous, psychedelic and eccentric, catalyzing their own reality where nothing is what it seems and you can expect the unexpected to occur.
To indulge in something truly broad minded and pioneering, I’d suggest you listen to this and the band’s back catalogue. –Dave Wolff
Track list:
1. The Gateway
2. Medicamente Daemonum
3. Cult Activity
4. I Conjure Thee
5. Clandestine Chemestry
6. Witchcraft
7. Pleasure in the House of Lucifer
8. Lascivious Elixir
9. Spooky Dick Magic
10. Black Flame Debauchery
11. Minds Filled with Terror
12. Sentient Exaltation
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