If you've read the review for the fantastic album, The Black House, you'll notice that the review points out that The Black House, while extremely fast and heavy, does refine and clean up their production. The riffs are also less hectic. Well, throw that all out the window as with Destruction Ritual Krieg hit hard with a gut wrenching, violent, and brutal slab of USBM that's sure to please the appetites of many Black Metal fans worldwide.

The Black House is certainly one of my favorite USBM albums and worthy of its 95+ rating here on MR, yet Destruction Ritual is another great album, even if it's approached at a different angle.

Destruction Ritual is one of the heaviest, most aggressive Black Metal albums I've heard in years. It certainly doesn't fit in with the Cascadian scene, or the likes of Xasthur and Nachtmystium. Krieg bring forth an even heavier version of some of the most violent Scandinavian Black Metal.

Opening the onslaught is the fast paced, yet speculative title track. From the get go Krieg make it obvious that they were more than capable of appropriately titling their albums. The song starts out like many from Krieg, with a consistent barrage of blast beats and tortured vocals. Normally several minutes straight of blast beats would leave me bored and annoyed, but Krieg do well here to keep their songs entertaining, throwing in some nice riffing and fantastic drumming to keep my mind guessing and on its toes.

The sound of the various instruments is intriguing. You'll notice right off the bat that the guitars are behind in the mix, and have a very interesting sound to them. They have an almost sweeping, alien, very abrasive like quality that I haven't really heard in Black Metal. And because they're in the back of the mix they aren't really a highlight of the album. But when have Black Metal bands truly put an emphasis on their guitars anyways. While there are exceptions, guitars shouldn't be the primary focus of Black Metal. On The Ancient Dwells Beneath there's a cool little portion leading to the end of the track where a clean guitar is strummed at a moderate pace while blast beats and lyrics ride over them. It's a pretty harrowing experience.

I personally think Krieg are best with their groovy portions and should gravitate further from using consistent blast beats throughout an entire album. The last couple of minutes on the 1st track (which is the title) are definitely some of the best. This drummer is extremely talented, and has the endurance of a Kenyan Olympian. His blast beats sound effortless, his double bass is fast and consistent, and he makes good use of his China cymbal on a few songs which makes the album even heavier. The music here is great, but the amount of blast beats can make the album seem monotonous. Each song normally starts off with some tormented wails from the vocalist (which are extremely terrifying) and a load of very fast blast beats. When the songs slow down and find themselves in a groove of sorts is when the strength of Krieg shines through.

Judging by their sound the aim of Krieg is to pummel the listener with a consistent attack of noisome Black Metal through an unrelenting chain of blast beats and psychotic vocals. Krieg do well with their sound, even inserting some dark clean guitar leads on songs like A Crumbling Shrine.

When Krieg slow down for a few fleeting moments and break from their blast beats is when I believe their artistic talents prove to be their most worthy. Black Ash Snowfall has a nice foray into the slower and more groovy sounds in Black Metal for just a moment before another round of moderate blast beats approach the listener. The song runs a basic drum beat that works well with the riff before going into the usual Krieg violence. While I might not be too thrilled with the amount of blast beats on Destruction Ritual, I do think that the vocalist does his best and most evil sounding work over the blast beats. The album is a good one, but one I couldn't score any higher than I did because of the large tracts of blast beats which start out many songs. The guitar sound is not exactly what I had hoped for. It's really behind everything else and doesn't effectively provide riffs that are quality enough to even make the strings worth paying attention to. The major and foremost detractor to this record is the strings, and the vocals, while great, are much too loud. It's the imbalance in the treble dimension that is the chief problem with my scoring. Krieg definitely did not seek a crisp sound on Destruction Ritual. But Krieg had a plan and they stuck to their formula. The result being a spine tingling Black Metal experience unique to the USBM scene.