Lowheaven – Ritual Decay
Release Date: 29th August 2025
Label: MNRK Heavy
Bandcamp
Genre: Post-Metal, Post-Rock, Post-Hardcore, Metalcore, Alternative Metal.
FFO: The Atlas Moth, Cave In, Rolo Tomassi.
Review By: Jeff Finch
It’s a mixed bag going into a listen completely blind, only basing expectations on various descriptors and others opinions. Sometimes the lack of preconception is best for a first listen, while sometimes listening to a band beforehand might give more insight into who they are and what they do. Today’s focus lowheaven lies in the former, this listener having never listened before. And let me just say, this debut album made me a fan.
Describing themselves as post-metal, the band touches on a bevy of genres throughout; punk, metalcore, downright batshit insane, there are a lot of sounds contained here that will give those wanting a visceral beatdown exactly what they want. No sooner than track 1, In Grievance, does this make its presence known; intense shrieks (almost muffled, but in a great way) blistering from the speakers yield to impressive clean vocals then segue into a straight-up doom metal riff. At points a chaotically impressive feat of musicianship, at others a contemplative state of mind, each of the instruments adds to this song in their own way that could not be better described than a cacophonous symphony.
These impressively visceral shouts make their presence known in nearly every track, a deep growl entering on Chemical Pattern and Cancer Sleep adding an extra layer of tension to these tracks, listeners unsure of what’s coming next. The latter of these two, however, still contains a bevy of intense shrieks over doomy riffs, unrelenting as the music shifts to a faster tempo. The band transitions from post-metal to post-hardcore to doom metal with intense precision, glacial riffs bleeding into a post-hardcore break, the dense riffs acting as earthmovers before the transition.
Nothing Else Frail sees the band break into a blast of punk almost immediately before transitioning into their vicious mid-tempo pace, a breakdown opening space for those feral, unhinged vocals, damn near frightening in its execution. These guys know how to create a wall of sound that sounds well composed, each instrument still able to be heard but the overall cacophony creating absolute bedlam.
What can be taken from this debut album is that lowheaven is angry, they want to be heard, and they’re letting the music do the talking. From dreamy beginnings mixed with guitar reverb on Amherst, or those slow, intentional doom riffs generating a punishing atmosphere rife with tension on Mercy Death, the band shows utmost confidence in their ability to attack multiple genres and come out unscathed. Mercy Death, in particular, brings out the fear, listeners anticipating a traumatizing event any second now, a sense of eerie, enveloping trepidation hanging on to listeners as the track moves forward…
Lowheaven likely knew they needed to end as well as they began, and they wrote the last two brilliantly. Penultimate track Violence_ has a final moment that feels like the end, but with just enough left out to realize that the end is yet to grace (hehe) us, final track Manic Grace making certain we know we’ve reached the apex, replete with haunting piano and no vocals to end it, the unheard players deafening in their absence.
And it’s with that we come to the end of Ritual Decay. Having no preconceptions, I was shocked to learn this is the bands debut; this sounds like a band who has spent years refining their sound, confident in their music and letting the album do the talking. They certainly did the latter, this album telling us that lowheaven isn’t going anywhere.
(4.5 / 5)
