Review by Ben for Samael - Blood Ritual (1992)

Blood Ritual is quite often ignored by fans of the band. While many consider (myself included) Samael's debut Worship Him to be an important album in the development of black metal, there seem to be a lot of fans that don't consider the band's second album to be as successful. The band obviously decided to clean up their sound and focus on simple yet effective song structures for this release and I have to say they succeeded in producing a thoroughly entertaining and atmospheric album. I can only think that fans of the far more aggressive Ceremony of Opposites album would naturally go on to check out Blood Ritual, and found the style to be extremely different, and therefore rather disappointing.

Xytras' drum sound was given a huge boost in production for this album and when combined with the simple riffing makes for quite a crushing effect. Vorphalack's vocals are also effective, yet he can sound a bit silly during spoken word sections. There's nothing at all technical about what Samael were doing at this stage of their evolution, but it served its purpose rather nicely. Blood Ritual is in no way challenging to listen to and that can be a nice change after an overdose on highly complex, underproduced black metal, no matter how much better it is. Highlights for me are Beyond the Nothingness, After the Sepulture and Blood Ritual.