Tonight in Ferndale… This band (with a new record, out-soon on Urinal Cake Records) is opening up for Ed Schrader’s Music Beat
Ritual Howls
Ritual Howls are a local trio putting a groove to cacophony. Samples of every day city noise are stretched and sequenced to slamming beats from a whole table’s worth of drum machines. The reverb-drenched kick-drums slam hard enough to break your doors down. There’s some danceability dribbled in and the gut-punching doom-marches are sweetened by fuzzy cymbals, sweeps of wavy bass licks and tinny roars from the pedal-mutated lead guitars. Some songs on their new album may invite reminiscences of Joy Division’s entrancingly gloomy brand of post-punk. But there’s something much more ferocious here. It’s not punk, it’s not a hardcore slamming mosh thing and it’s not exactly ear-splitting, droning-dirge noise experimentation. It’s electronic but primal and it’s hyper-aggressive but cerebral.
It’s fitting for them to open for Ed Schrader’s Music Beat, similarly neither here-nor-there when it comes to techno-elements crushed under the boots of noise-loving punk murkiness.
Ritual Howls, Ed Schrader’s Music Beat, Lord Scrummage, Reverend – 9:00 p.m. – Friday April 5th– The Loving Touch (22634 Woodward Ave.) Ferndale
This article appears in Apr 3-9, 2013.
