The fifth album from this band from Sweden.
The band is a quartet with a lineup of percussion, drums, bouzoki, bass, mandolin, guitars, harmonica, harmonium, keyboards, flutes and vocals.
The band has made a comeback again after an album break of seventeen years.
During these seventeen years, the band got a semi-classic status and rightly so. Their 2007 album The Hemulic Voluntary Band is one of the best prog rock albums ever to come from Sweden.
The music on this three-quarters of an hour long album is a mix of Scandinavian symphonic prog, art-rock and eclectic prog. There are also some hints of raga-rock and Middle-East folk music.
The music is also pretty true to what the band did on The Hemulic Voluntary Band.
The vocals is very good and pretty operatic.
The music is also pretty complex and epic with some classical music 'esque types of melody lines inbetween some more prog rock melodies.
Some of the music is more pastoral too.
The use of the various instruments here is very clever too.
It can be argued that this is their best album so far. It is hard to beat The Hemulic Voluntary Band though.... Nevertheless, this is a great album and a very much a triumphant return from Ritual.
This is surely be among the best albums this year.
4 points
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