"Beyond The Fragile Horizon" is the debut album of the Italian band THE RITUAL that came as a pleasant surprise to my ears. These guys identify their music as heavy melodic core. I think that after a while all those labels of the kinds of Metal are just a matter of personal taste and how each band feels like and wants to identify itself. For sure though, there is a lot of heaviness in the album, a lot of melody and a lot of groove. Eventually this blend provides a great debut album.

The album is a forty one minutes long and consists of eight songs. The first homonymous track is a small instrumental introduction to "Show me What You Can Do". "Show me What You Can Do" and "Jason On The River" clearly define the musical style of the band with heavy riffing, great guitar melodies, beautiful vocals and a lot of disparities. "Hysteria & Madness" is even heavier with riffs reminding of Swedish melodic Death school. The speed rate was lowered a bit with "Shoot Me" and the awesome "Without". On "Together" things gets rawer while the chorus has great melodies again. The two ending songs go in the same style as the first ones, yet they are very pleasant to listen to.

The production is a killer. The songwriting is very good; the songs have a lot of variations and flow nicely, making the listening very enjoyable. Marco "Bobo" Obice's singing is excellent going either melodic or harsh vocal lines. Technically, THE RITUAL are displaying great skills in all instruments with clever riffs, memorable leads, intense drumming and a nice baseline in the background. "Beyond the Fragile Horizon" is a surprisingly good album which I really enjoyed and I consider it to be a great start for the band. They still have a lot of work ahead of them if they want to offer something really original but still, their debut album shows that they have the capabilities to achieve something better.