Yeah, turn that shit up. No, seriously. Turn it up. I can’t hear what is going on. What sort of horrors can come from a mysterious project whose demo has been slung to the far corners of hell by Nuclear War Now? Well, once the volume is properly adjusted, the audience can get acquainted with The Pits of Tentacled Screams, the debut demo from Ritual Chamber. I am unaware whether it is the tentacles screaming or screams are emanating from the pit of tentacles. Whatever the answer, it sounds horrifying.

To get this out of the way, Ritual Chamber is the project of Dario J. Derna who lent his services to Evoken, Drawn and Quartered, and currently Krohm. Derna seems interested in soliciting his services to projects that emanate gloom and despair. Ritual Chamber plays a particular variety of death metal in a particularly lower gear. The Pits of Tentacled Screams‘ opening track, “The Dawning of a New Inversion” crawls through a landscape of terror and wailing guitar flairs at a pace that is unusual but effective. Even when the album does pick up on “Glorious Curse of Almighty Death” and “Black Rites of Conjuration,” there is a deliberate slowness that adds to the weight of the music. For a record that has an album cover depicting suffocating detail, Ritual Chamber has chosen a perfect speed at which to cruise the highways of the abyss.

Listening to Ritual Chamber feels alien as their rhythm and speed, though varied, is surreal and nightmarish. The standard death metal sections of The Pits of Tentacled Screams are blurred and behind thick waterfalls of torment and atmosphere. In the world of cavernous death, Ritual Chamber has found a place where no light shines — and where unknown creatures have been breeding in shadows for years.