EP REVIEW: Ritual King - Elixir

Ritual King are a 3 piece Blues/stoner rock band from Manchester consisting of Jordan Leppitt (Lead vox/Guitar), Dan Godwin (Bass) and Rodge Hodges (Drums/backing vox) who began life in early 2016 and have now produced their debut EP “Elixir”.

Kicking off with a rolling beat and a catchy as hell riff they start, with “Devil’s Chokehold”, as they mean to go on. Infectious Grooves, although the name of an Anthrax side project, is the perfect description of the sounds on this cracker-jack EP. They do know how to ring the changes though, as the gentle acoustic guitar intro to second track “ISD” shows, before kicking back with another great riff and an especially interesting drum pattern. Great clean vocals from Jordan, and he then let’s loose with a superb guitar break at the conclusion of the track. In fact it is plainly obvious that these three guys are at one with their instruments and each other, the arrangements on all tracks require a ‘tightness’ which belies the newness of the band.

“Detachment” has a great structure and again has the “rolling” sound which seems to me to be quite unique to this band and gives them real individuality. Although they describe themselves as blues/stoner rock, that really doesn’t start to describe their sound, it is so much more than that. This track contains a very tasty little guitar break too. Following on we have “Too Fast” which I can see fast (sorry!) becoming a crowd favourite, and the chorus is a nailed on sing-a-long and has a hook which could catch a whale. It is certainly my favourite track on the EP.

To conclude the band have given us “Unorthodox Satisfaction” but to be honest the satisfaction you will get from this EP is of a very orthodox nature – it is just faultless and this final track puts together all the elements of the EP into a nice, neat, hammer down, bundle. I am positive you will be hitting the ‘replay’ button the moment it finishes. In a word? Awesome