Review by Tobias on May 8, 2001.

For a band that touts stupid little slogans like "Play this at maximum volume or be a wimp" or "If you don’t enjoy this record, fuck off and die" on their CD sleeve, I would expect something either as powerful or terrifying as hell.

But that’s not what you get with In Aeternum’s The Pestilent Plague. In fact, if any band is so bold to write crap like that on their CD, you can bet your ass there’ll be people like me to shred those idiotic claims. To save time, I think I’ll just bullet point what these candyass dolts deliver:

• Almost laughable growls. This guy… or kid, I’m not quite sure… has his real voice bursting through the seams of his tired and mundane growling. Fire him.
• The guitar work sounds exactly the same across the board. It’s simple in a bad way and completely unimaginative. Go to hell.
• The lyrics are about the dumbest thing I’ve heard since Chinchilla’s Madness album. "Kill the Christians, kill them all!" and "I curse you all" are likely the high points… and that is pathetic. These numb-nuts should take a lesson from the 80’s cyberpunk Foetus who’s big track was The only Good Christian is a Dead Christian. Guess what, THEY BROKE UP and they were MORE IMAGINATIVE. Besides, didn’t every freaking death metal band in the 80’s already do that?
• Bass is drab, but what else would you expect from an album on which every song sounds the same.
• Drumming is completely uneventful and just seems to plod along with the rest of the losers.
• Everything about this band screams mediocrity. They want to be scary and they make me laugh. If they want to be frightening they should try taking a hint from Lamb of God.

This is the most mediocre and boring death metal I’ve heard in a long time… perhaps I wouldn’t be so hard on them if they weren’t conceited enough to actually print that truckload of chicken feces on the inside cover.

Bottom Line: These guys are the equivalent of a conceited film director that’s made nothing but low budget, not scary, B horror movies.

Rating: 3 of 10

Review by Tobias on May 8, 2001.

For a band that touts stupid little slogans like "Play this at maximum volume or be a wimp" or "If you don’t enjoy this record, fuck off and die" on their CD sleeve, I would expect something either as powerful or terrifying as hell.

But that’s not what you get with In Aeternum’s The Pestilent Plague. In fact, if any band is so bold to write crap like that on their CD, you can bet your ass there’ll be people like me to shred those idiotic claims. To save time, I think I’ll just bullet point what these candyass dolts deliver:

• Almost laughable growls. This guy… or kid, I’m not quite sure… has his real voice bursting through the seams of his tired and mundane growling. Fire him.
• The guitar work sounds exactly the same across the board. It’s simple in a bad way and completely unimaginative. Go to hell.
• The lyrics are about the dumbest thing I’ve heard since Chinchilla’s Madness album. "Kill the Christians, kill them all!" and "I curse you all" are likely the high points… and that is pathetic. These numb-nuts should take a lesson from the 80’s cyberpunk Foetus who’s big track was The only Good Christian is a Dead Christian. Guess what, THEY BROKE UP and they were MORE IMAGINATIVE. Besides, didn’t every freaking death metal band in the 80’s already do that?
• Bass is drab, but what else would you expect from an album on which every song sounds the same.
• Drumming is completely uneventful and just seems to plod along with the rest of the losers.
• Everything about this band screams mediocrity. They want to be scary and they make me laugh. If they want to be frightening they should try taking a hint from Lamb of God.

This is the most mediocre and boring death metal I’ve heard in a long time… perhaps I wouldn’t be so hard on them if they weren’t conceited enough to actually print that truckload of chicken feces on the inside cover.

Bottom Line: These guys are the equivalent of a conceited film director that’s made nothing but low budget, not scary, B horror movies.

Rating: 3 of 10

Review by JD on June 26, 2017.

I never know when a band that comes in for review will either blow me away with its brilliance or if I just want to tell them to simply blow,… and yet I live for the moment when a band impacts me either way.  Will the California based goth/thrash metal Arcane Ritual be the one to blow my mind or simply just fizzle out?

The duo known as Arcane Ritual (Teresa Camp: vocals and Jarek Tatarek: all instruments) delivers a magnificent emboldened hybrid of goth, doom and thrash metal melding together into a very powerful form with some progressive elemental touches. Merging marvellously haunting but stunning vocals with heavy twisting music that seems to be alive all on its own, this is an act with incredible vision, tonnes of passion and all of the musical chops to back it all up.

Normally, I do not like EP's… as they are far too short of a format for anyone to make a good review on a band at the best of times, but this particular EP is the exception to even my own quirky rules.  With just three songs offered, it quickly wets the hard-to-find-usually curiosity part of my brain because of its power as it soars with authority… all the while its haunting artistic tone lifts it into a higher class, swirling and growing with every word sung, and riff produced.  It is a sleeping giant, waiting for the metal masses to discover and enjoy.

Simply put, Enemy of the State leaves me wanting to hear much more from Arcane Ritual, and wanting to see just how the music will grow in the future as well.  I wait for the next album, EP or single... Though I am hoping it will be a full album.  The album is a sleeping giant, waiting for the metal masses to discover and make grow.  Let’s wake the Giant of a band, and unleash it to the metal world… shall we?

Rating: 9 out of 10