What an absolute legend of a solo artist. REVENANT MARQUIS released yet another deep cutting black metal ritual on the 21^st of March, and it is a wild one. To give some due history to our mysterious musician, their assertion is that they were out of ritual and rite with their master (the Devil) when they were pulled back in to spite being dead. The sound created by the project is keeping with not only the finest tradition of metal, but also the darkest and most brutal.

To begin a review on these songs piece by piece would not in any way do it justice. I opt instead to give my commentary on the sound and then dissect the album titles, as I believe it is intended. The entire sonic theme of the album is enough to make the most seasoned metal listeners on edge, with production that seems to force its way through a tin can, to find no form of mixing or mastering to give it clarity. This album, in my opinion, lives in that space of a good Christian parents mind that wants to be accusatory to every metal band worshiping the Devil. You were wrong, and this is what you were afraid of.

Track by track research into the ritual itself can disclose a few things, and I have found best practices by studying reviews and interviews of the past with our mysterious musician. "Haverfordwest" refers to a town in Wales built around a castle established in roughly 1100. As a derelict castle, it is said that the caste was converted entirely to a prison in 1799. It is easy to see how the pain and unholy elements of this site could draw into a ritualistic purpose for this track. As for "Children of the Grand Abyss" I can only lean on my darkest and most obscure sources to give clarity. The Grand Abyss, or Blood Rift as it is referred to in several places, is the 4^th layer of the Abyss. It is thought to be a gateway into every uncharted layer of the Abyss and the walls of the canyon housing it bathed in a toxic blood river. I can only assume things birthed or created in the environment to be incredibly dark and vile. As you can see the ritual seems to progress quickly into its movements, perhaps with the pain and anguish of our origin point used as a type of jumping off point to the darkest ritual possible. "Beibl" is the Welsh word for bible, and the implication of this short track as a work of ritual in the least could refer to either a work that the Devil finds palatable or a work against a religious text. The clear "Geist Unbaptised" would refer to a spirit that was not "washed in to" the Christian faiths, one that would be considered not salvageable by God or whichever creator it was presorted to. The entire ritual so far seems to be given purpose by retrieving a condemned soul. "Under the Hand of the Master", I believe, personally, ya know, would be a part in which that condemned soul was brought into the light of this religious ritual and it's worship of the Devil. "Dianc" is again Welsh (for "escape") and given the circumstance of using a prison to enter a realm of blood river and portals through the Abyss to retrieve a damned soul and convert its inherent loyalties, that seems fitting. Bringing a violent completion to the ritual, it would seem my interpretation is no longer needed.

At the end of the day, I review music. This music is the type that could throw the unfamiliar listener in to a production related panic attack, and a Karen type into immediate cardiac arrest. I love the intent and the purpose given to this extremely raw and unfiltered ritual, but this is not music meant to be passively "listened to". You either go in on this album to worship the pure evil it invokes, or not at all. Consider yourself warned.