Track By Tracks: BloodFeast Ritual - Altars of Sacrifice (2020)

1. Grave Fodder:

Grave Fodder might be the oldest song the band has. It was originally composed by Michael Bala back at Berklee and titled “Our Guitarist Mike Has a Crush on Carly Rae Jepsen.” Throughout the years, the song has seen an occasional facelift, but has remained largely the same. This track was very inspired by Gothenburg Swedish bands of the early to mid-90s and is a tribute to such acts. Lyrically, the song is about an Ed Gain like character that keeps dead bodies in the house to stave off crushing loneliness.

2. Eternally Molested By the One Most Foul:

This tune is almost as old as Grave Fodder. Composed by Michael Bala in the latter days of his Berklee career, Eternally Molested By the One Most Foul was a strange experiment that resulted in a song. At the time, all of the songs Mike was writing were fast and technical and didn’t have much melody. Attempting to slow down and bring groove into the mix, along with a structure different than verse-chorus-verse-chorus yielded this track. Lyrically, this song is about using an Ouija board and being pulled into hell during an orgy of demons. Is it ridiculous? Yes. Do we love it because of how ridiculous it is? Absolutely.

3. No More Room In Hell:

This song was an experiment by Mike to try and hit the mark between death metal and thrash metal circa 1991. Musically, the song is (mostly) in E Phrygian Dominant, which is a dark scale that lends itself well to chromatic embellishments. That’s where the strength of the song lies; its ability to snake in and out of chaos depending on how “in” or “out” the scale is. The slam section is also incredibly hard-hitting and is certainly the most “brutal” section on the whole EP. This song also has quite a few intricate guitar moments that borderline on self-indulgence, but we’ll just call that part of the charm, eh? Lyrically this song is about Dawn of the Dead. Everybody can boogie to being torn apart by zombies.

4. Chopped Up and Burned:

If any song on the EP were about getting people to mosh, it’s Chopped Up and Burned. This song is the most straightforward in terms of structure, but is only there to get people pumped. Harmonically this song is also pretty simple; bouncing between chromatic riffs and straight symmetrical diminished scale. The song’s lyrics are taken from Evil Dead, which is a favorite movie of guitarist Michael Bala.

5. Fetid Offering:

Fetid proves to be the most collaborative effort on the EP. Most of the riffs were composed by guitarist Hunter Gurney. The song proves to be the most outwardly technical of the bunch, and ties Grave Fodder in speed, clocking in at 210BPM. Fetid Offering was chosen as the EP closer because of the structure alone; the first half is an assault of technical shredding, and the second half is more melodic, leading to a climactic end of the EP. The lyrics, written by Hunter Gurney, talk of Eldritch horror and tell the story of a man collecting human eyes to sacrifice to a Lovecraftian deity.