"Prayer" takes shape slowly: Halfway through the second album by Portland menaces Atriarch, the guitars work within a web of distortion, a monstrous riff cutting occasionally through the sinister reverie. The drums pound deep in circular patterns, cresting over edges of throbbing bass. "There is a soul inside you/ Not yet damned," Lenny Smith begins, singing low and long so as to suggest a manipulated monastic invocation. The next five minutes feel like an ascent up some hellish rollercoaster: The guitar tone turns into a stranglehold, and the rhythm section digs a little deeper with each pass. Haranguing religious zealots, Smith grows evermore irascible, his voice grating against everything: "Fall into submission/ Grovel/ Pray," he shouts mockingly, repeating that last word until it becomes a curse. "See what it brings you." For all of last year's talk about the return or regreasing of pigfuck, Atriarch's excoriation affords a solo-shooter level of terror, the sound of a madman let loose in front of a rancorous rock band.
That's the gist for Ritual of Passing, an astonishing progression for the Portland quartet from their 2011 debut, Forever the End. Atriarch 2012 seem to be a gristmill for topical and musical heaviness, churning out songs about the corruption of salvation and the endless quest for renewal above a soundtrack that cuts from Swans to Darkthrone, Celtic Frost to the Fall. The despondency of "Cursed" comes projected onto slinking doom, baritone vocals stretched over a Melvins-sized creep. While "Offerings" burns out on a black metal rampage, it fades away with an atmospheric denouement; that transition, mind you, comes after a passage that sounds a bit like Mark E. Smith fronting a viscous math-rock outfit. Though opener "Parasite" begins with a long and looming spoken-word section concerning power struggles and fallen idols, it eventually emerges as a hardcore anthem fit for fans of Fucked Up. Slanted guitars and roiling drums bolster Smith's call for revolution: "Will a change call for a fight? This is war."
Indeed, Ritual of Passing is so bleak that its four-minute epilogue-- an ancient Hindu text lifted from the Upanishads and intoned over a wafting chorus and visceral drones-- feels redundant, a cheap horror-show reel shown after the truly scary stuff ends. Fright is what Atriarch do best. In only two years, they've started to find that rarified space where the anxiety of their ideas is manifest within the coils of their music. Like Swans and even Eyehategod before them, they've started to sound as tough as their themes suggest they might; when Smith says you should be trembling or troubled, don't be surprised if you actually are.
For all of Ritual of Passing's malevolence, there are backlit layers of hard-won redemption and hardline self-reckoning, too. Smith takes aim at hypocrites and unfounded hope, but he carefully works in mechanisms for, at the very least, being better than them. "Altars", for instance, aims to dismantle religious icons wholesale, to shrug off symbols that, as he puts it, "bear witness to this tyranny." The sound matches the script, with guitars that cut like rusty, serrated blades and a bassline that creeps with suspicion. But during the last minute, the instruments relax, and Smith comes up for air, ostensibly sobered on solidarity: "You who are my enemy/ I embrace you as my brother," he says twice. Traces of the same hopeful sentiment appear in the darkest of places; "Parasite" calls for open hearts and minds, while, as the title suggests, "Altruist" calls for selflessness while demanding that the toughest choices about life and liberty ("Which side are you on?") be made now. At one point, he even seeks forgiveness for the complacency of "a normal life." He's not above his own scorn.
Ritual of Passing's only true shortcoming is Atriarch's restlessness; that is, these 40 minutes can sometimes feel like a seesaw of upheaval, volleying between directions and references at a pace that's unsettling. Part of that stems from Smith's chameleonic abilities as a vocalist; in short order, he's capable of sounding like a pugnacious bar-rock frontman, a black metal belter, and Sunn O)))'s stateside vocalist. Considering their slim discography, though, these are healthy problems for Atriarch to have. After a relatively humdrum start, Ritual of Passing is a gauntlet of ideas and enthusiasms by a band with the tenacity to make good on most all of them. They might scare the hell out of you in the process.
