Dark Ritual

Dark Ritual is a death metal band from Indore. In fact, they seem pretty much like Vedic Metal to me, but the vocalist maintains that they're not, so alright, I'll take his word for it. It's a good band, with nice solid compositions. The rather poor quality of their production keeps their songs from receiving too many plays on my playlist. But I still wanna share, cause production is something that can be improved you know? The real stuff is the music.

So, Dark Ritual is basically these people right here

Nick: Vocals/Ethnic Instruments 
Nishant: Guitars (Looks like Prasad Bhat. Holy shit, the resemblance.)
Jazz: Guitars 
Richard: Bass 
Jeet: Keyboards 
Harshit: Drums

This keyboards man: Jeet, does this really cool thing where he pickes the synth up, off the stand, while playing it and just walks up to the front of the stage, and headbangs. I have not seen any other band doing that. I found that immensely cool.

And since there's no real band photo as such, I'm just going to upload their logo. At least there's that.

I've seen them live twice, and it appears like there really is something wrong with their sound. The drums and vocals are always too loud, and the guitars always too submerged. It's the exact same problem with their studio recordings. Guitars barely audible, drums and vocals too loud. They need to fix that, because they're a good band, coming up with some real good stuff. It'd be a shame to spoil that cause of bad sound. So, just look past it until somone comes around and fixes that, alright? Cool, let's move on to the music they make. They've got two songs so far:

1.) Rudra

There's a temporary opening riff, which isn't visited later on in the song at all, but of note here is the warhorn sounding the beginning of the song. The real opening riff begins at 40 seconds in. Some killer keyboard playing. Sturdy double bass wall. Furious guitar riffing. Bass not very present, but you can tell in the live shows. The vocals are not the best examples of growling, but at least they don't suck like Assault or something. They're not bad. But the vocals sound absolutely amazing when doing the chorus "Mrityunjay Mahadev Trahiman Sharnagatam". Yes, that is a Sanskrit chant. Yes, it is the chorus. Sounds beautiful actually.  There's more Sanskrit chanting in the song. A very faint guitar solo. But rather furious, pretty good. I wish the guitar volume wasn't turned down so much. Also, it doesn't seem like there's two guitarists. Seems like one could get the job done, no problem.

2.) Aghori

This is the better track of the two. Perhaps because the chorus is instantly recognisable to anyone. It's produced a little better too. But unfortunately the drums still wayy too loud, and the guitars still not sounding too good. This time the keyboards providing the atmospherics, instead of working a tune. Sounds good. Like wind blowing away the remaining ashes of a funeral pyre. It's somehow impossible to resist headbanging during the chorus "Om aim bhreem kleem chamundaye vichchaye". Again, yeah, that's right. Song's got a pretty cool breakdown, with keyboards sharing the badassery for a bit. The guitar solo is pretty goshdarned awesome. Speeds up the entire song second-by-second, finally letting go, giving way to a rhythmic spewing of the chorus.

Who Will Like It? Fans of Death Metal, sure. Fans of the idea of mixing an Indian element to metal.

Who Will Not Like It? People who need their music to be well-produced, and can't handle coarse mixes.

Where To Find It? Reverbnation

Free Download? Nope

Lyrics? Only for Rudra

General Links:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dark-Ritual/140484266001268

Reverbnation: http://www.reverbnation.com/darkritual