
Sado Rituals - The Harrowing Of Hell [Gates Of Hypnos - 2025]The Harrowing Of Hell is a dense, gloomy, and truly oppressive slice of drone-bound wall-craft, with moodily effective/ distant industrial undercurrents. This recently released digital album from Poland’s Sado Rituals rolls in at seventy-seven minutes and seven seconds long, remaining bleakly tolling and grimly thickly grinding throughout. Cover artwork-wise we get a very contrast-heavy take of one Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings detailing hell. The release can be found here.
The single/self-titled track is built around a very thick mix of a slow bass juddering ‘n’ rolling, a selection of murky tollings, and cluttering hiss edge gallop. From time to time, I’m also making out hints at distant industrial clang, touches of bass-bound billowing unease, and subtone rumble. It’s a very airless and crushing ‘wall’, which really does suggest a slow-but-steady descent into fire-edged, death-pit boling, and black, steadily churning corridor-ed hell.
There might be the odd shift/ movement within the ‘wall’s mass, but largely this remains very full & set throughout. With the whole thing slowly but surely dragging you into a bone-crushing and truly doomed sonic place.
The Harrowing Of Hell may not be as layered, nuanced, and detailed as some of this project's work, but the more you play it, the more you notice. If you're in the market for bleak, totally doomed, and airless oppressive walls- this release fits the ticket perfectly.      Roger Batty
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