The debut full length album from Pittsburghs Ritual Mass is more than a collection of songs, its a series of calculated assaults on the virtue of the holy. Evolving beyond earlier EP and demo releases, Cascading Misery encapsulates the bludgeoning infliction of pain and the slow peel of skin by flame, rife with both sonic chaos and extinguished hope.

From the outset of album opener Obsidian Mirror the atmosphere is oppressive, thick with a suffocating malaise. There is a sense of something ceremonial at work but not in a way that seeks communion. Rather its ordeal as sacrament. Riffs strangle and churn into convulsive submission, oscillating from slow agony to psychotic break, over which a guttural lament so savage it freezes the blood is wrenched through dungeon stone. Each track unfolds like time spent in isolation, bound by chains, the mind slowly unraveling and surrounded by memories of torment both real and imagined.

By the time the epic fourteen-minute album closer Disquiet dissipates into a mass of formless static, Ritual Mass have dragged you into a world where suffering is not an end but a condition of existence. Cascading Misery is music for the dissolution of hope, the terror of being, and the long march toward death.