Review by Daniel for Ritual (GBR) - Widow (1983)

This 1983 debut album from London three-piece heavy rockers Ritual is quite an unusual & interesting release for the NWOBHM. Ritual actually formed way back in 1973 & took a full decade to get their recording career underway but you can definitely hear that in their sound as this is not your usual Iron Maiden or Saxon clone. Ritual’s sound is much more organic than the more modern & flashy metal music that was popular at the time & has clearly been built predominantly around warmer 70’s influences.

Although they unquestionably deserve their strong ties with the NWOBHM scene, it’s actually debatable as to whether Ritual are a legitimate metal band or not. There’s arguably more hard rock here than genuine metal but that's not a criticism because the band certainly possessed a pretty unique feel. This is some particularly dark music sporting a sombre atmosphere & lyrical themes based predominantly on the occult. At no stage do the band members really try to shred. They’re much more comfortable laying down deep layers of moss-covered doom rock with a noticeable psychedelic component to the guitar playing. In fact, we’ve heard a real revival of this sound over the last decade or so but this was the genuine article.

I actually think I might find this record to be much more metal if not for a strange production job that sees the guitars sitting miles too far back in the mix. The bass guitar is much louder & all of the instrumentalists need to contend with a thick layer of hissy analogue tape noise that only adds to a general feeling of authenticity in my opinion. Most bands wouldn’t be able to recover from this sort of dodgy production job but strangely it seems to suit Ritual even though it sucks nearly all of the heaviness out of their music.

The musicianship is nothing special but it doesn’t need to be, as this record is more about atmosphere than the actual performances. Guitar-slinging front man Gypsy Re Bethe sounds like he might be the older brother of Diamond Head singer Sean Harris in that he decorates each song with inventive vocal phrasings that aren’t usually equated with metal, only with a deeper register than the whiny Harris. His lead guitar work is where the psychedelics come into play & I get the distinct feeling that The Doors were a strong influence as his style is quite controlled but clearly targeted towards drawing a more cerebral reaction from the listener.

The two best songs are clearly the doomier numbers with both of them paying obvious homage to the title track from Black Sabbath’s “Heaven & Hell”. I also hear a lot of classic early 70’s Sabbath here & there’s one track that makes no attempt to hide a clear Motorhead influence too. The more rockin’ tracks often have a bit of a bluesy boogie feel goin’ on at times but not in a bad way. It’s actually kinda cool & I find a lot to like about “Widow”. It’s a real shame that it took the band so long to get going because I bet they were an awesome live act & they definitely represented something a bit different for the NWOBHM.

To add to Ritual’s troubles there was a major error made in the printing of the album covers which saw a good half of the sleeves being released minus the band name so many potential fans may have given “Widow” a miss thinking that it was in fact a record from Ritual’s NWOBHM counterparts Widow. That’s a pretty bloody huge mistake & you would have thought that it could have been resolved before too much harm was done but apparently not. I suspect that it didn’t prevent a young Metallica from picking up a copy though because when you hear the opening riff from the song “Rebecca” it's very hard to deny the similarities with the main riff from Metallica’s “For Whom The Bell Tolls”. Ritual’s performance was admittedly very sloppy but I don’t think I’m out of line to assume that this was plagiarism.

There is some enjoyable stuff on this record & I think it manages to transcend it’s production issues. If you enjoyed Witchfinder General & Pagan Alter's early records then I’d recommend you check this out too.