Misery Index return with their 6th full-length album, Rituals of Power and for me this is the best album, thus far for 2019.  Holy Crap, Misery Index is on fire.  As much as I liked their last album, The Killing Gods, Rituals of Power is more aggressive, upping their death/grind approach to the nth degree!  Last year they released the I Disavow single and I commented on how that song was the strongest the band has ever released.  It’s included on here, re-recorded, sounding even more punishing.  Jason Netherton-bass/vocalist, Adam Jarvis-drums, Mark Kloeppel-guitars/vox and Darin Morris-guitar are gelling so ferocious on this album, so be prepared to have your head lopped off from a 1,000 miles away.

Opening with “Universal Untruths”, this is more of a mid-paced crushing opener and it’s like a slow burn.  A different type of opening track for Misery Index and I think the next song, “Decline and Fall” should actually be the opening song.  As soon as the opener ends, a short ditty of a tune, at 2.35, “Decline and Fall” opens with the Holy Shit moment with Adam Jarvis’ drum roll and boom right into the whirlwind grind blast.  So ferocious with a production, that elevates Misery Index even further-their best so far, in their career.  Crisp, punchy, brutal and each instrument showing power, few bands today can accomplish.  Some nice gang growling vocals going on as well.

“New Salem” has some massive drums and excellent guitar melodies, almost discordant in nature, and over the beginning blast works really well.  Then the song goes into a signature trademark mid paced rumbling from Misery Index, then blast, then back to the mid-paced crushing part.  Netherton spouting out some awesome vocals and with the mid-paced parts and some killer grooves, this needs to be their opening song live, for any tour then do this year.  This is such a vicious, ferocious song containing all the great thing Misery Index does so well.  And do not forget about that last song, for the regular full-length, because Misery Index, are not going to let you, neither will magillicutty slobberknocker, Lapinsky.  “Naysayer” gets into gravity blasts and quite possibly, well it is, actually is the fastest song Misery Index has ever done, even faster than “I Disavow”.  “Naysayer” is the quintessential album closer.  This is the most vicious song of 2019-this is so damn massive and brutal.

So I actually reviewed this box set of Rituals of Power.  The cd comes with 2 bonus cover songs.  The Nailbomb “Wasting Away”, which is ported over from the I Disavow single from last year, which I already reviewed here and it’s a great cover with Misery Index doing a few blasts in the song.  The other cover caught me off guard-“Man of Your Dreams” from M.O.D.  I know this song and lyrics backwards and forwards and Misery Index, with a guest vocalist on the song, injects their signature stylized heaviness to the track, not only making it their own, but giving much respect to a classic 80’s song.  It’s awesome.  I’d love for them to whip this song out live.  The cd digipak is manufactured on a glossy card stock and the booklet contains lyrics, pictures, liners and quotes.  The cardboard box opens and contains a patch, 3 stickers and nice bottle opener with the Misery Index logo on the strap-now don’t go choking people with this folks.  So yeah, as packaging goes, this is pure top-shelf type of packaging which goers a long way for the consumer to have in their metal collection.

Get Rituals of Power, at once, this album destroys and I think I like this better than Traitors, which was my favorite album from Misery Index-with that being said this is my favorite Misery Index album and the band should be proud of this Buy or Die Release!

 

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