24th May 2024
Christopher Nosnibor
Welcome… to The Royal Ritual! I simply felt the urge to open with that. It felt necessary, if only to me. But if you can’t please yourself…
In my case it’s something of a belated welcome, having been aware of the act and its founder, David Lawrie for quite some time, but having only recently come around to the actual music, with my introduction being their recent show in York. There’s something to be said for hearing a band live first, without knowing the songs, rather than the other way around: if they can grab you in that twenty minutes or half an hour, when you’re not necessarily primed to absorb songs and details, then there’s a strong chance they’ve won a fan, provided the recordings are up to scratch.
Where The Royal Ritual really stand out live is with the use of live guitar, which brings the benefit of not only an immediacy and human aspect to the predominantly digital music, but an additional body on stage, which creates not only a visual balance but a greater sense of movement.
Recorded, these elements are less essential, and the songs here are clearly the product of extreme focus and a meticulous attention to detail. When I wrote in my review of the York show that The Royal Ritual sound ‘produced’, I observed that ‘their approach to production owes more to the methods of Trent Reznor as pioneered in the early 90s on Broken and The Downward Spiral, balancing gritty live guitars with synths and fucked-up distortion and harnessing their tempestuousness in a way that creates a balanced yet abrasive sound.’ And so it is on record, also.
Pleasure Hides Your Needs is The Royal Ritual’s second full-length release, following MARTYRS in 2022. A lot has happened, and much has changed since then, and the project, born in lockdown, has evolved significantly – as have many of us. Life is different now: that’s a fact.
We learn that ‘Pleasure Hides Your Needs sees David contemplate his own life and experiences, adopting a distinctive, more personal tone than the expansive and outgoing approach of MARTYRS: “Pleasure Hides Your Needs is much more introspective when compared to the social and political commentary of MARTYRS,” says David. “For me, it is about the closing of three distinct chapters of my life. Finding the common threads through each of those chapters in order to represent them sonically, and in a consistent way, was a really interesting challenge – if at times quite emotionally exhausting.”
Life is exhausting, in every way, but there’s a tense energy to Pleasure Hides Your Needs. It builds from the instrumental intro piece, ‘Shadow Self’, where crashing waves erupt from soft ripples, dark rumbles and inaudible muttering contrast with chimes, before ‘Vantage Point’ opens a broad sonic vista paired with a solid kick drum beat. Just as it’s leaning into the proggier end of alternative rock, a gritty guitar kicks in and the mood immediately turns darker.
‘Fifteen 14’ lands as an unexpectedly pop tune, with a solid chorus, which softens the arrival of the album’s nine-and-a-half-minute centrepiece, ‘Sinner Gambler Fugitive’, which really does run the gamut for range, a sonic and emotional rollercoaster. It’s ‘Modes of Violence; that goes full industrial, with a metallic smash of a snare and snarling bass providing the backdrop or Lawrie’s wrought vocal as he wrestles with a veritable tempest of emotion, before he hollows himself on the bleak, minimal title track.
The album as a whole is more geared toward tension than release, always simmering but rarely bursting the floodgates. Muted isn’t the word: it’s more a case of clenching tightly to maintain a grip of control for fear of what may erupt otherwise.
Pleasure Hides Your Needs is dark and exploratory, but still eminently listenable. As The Royal Ritual evolves its sounds and expands its horizons, there remains much potential to explore myriad paths in the future, and recent touring will likely serve to open new avenues of exploration.
AA
Aural Aggravation 