Bandcamp Everything about The Black Mountain Ritual is homemade, and that turns out to be its greatest asset. The Chur four-piece recorded, mixed and mastered the thing themselves, and rather than chase a modern, brickwalled sheen they let it breathe: the drums sit in a real, airy room, the bass growls with genuine contour, and the whole record resists the loudness war outright. In an underground where so many DIY doom records arrive squashed flat, one that actually has depth and dynamic swing is a small pleasure on its own.
It helps that Mirkwood Spiders refuse to sit still. The Tolkien-nodding name and that fever-dream cover of a black peak ringed by torch-bearing figures set up a fantasy sprawl, and the band deliver it in shapes that keep shifting, “The Dragon Song” riding a warm, earthy mid-forward fuzz, the title track opening into an organic, spacious swing that leans on texture over razor precision. The real surprise is “Chakra,” a clean, fingerpicked acoustic piece with a bowed string humming underneath, its dynamics left completely intact, that proves these four have more than riffs in the tank. When “Chakra (For Now)” picks the thread back up and builds from that hush into saturated weight, the sequencing genuinely pays off.
The record is not flawless, and the flaws cluster where the arrangements get dense. “Necromancer” pushes its high-mids hard enough to fatigue the ear over its run, the cymbals turning harsh and the kick left short on low-end push, and across “Black Mountain Ritual” and “City of Titans” a low-mid pile-up costs some transparency, the bass smearing into the rhythm guitars just when the riffs want to land cleanly. These are the growing pains of a self-produced record reaching past its means, not failures of songwriting.
The Black Mountain Ritual is a warm, characterful, admirably ambitious prog-stoner-doom album that values air and variety over gloss, and mostly earns the trade. A firmer hand on the murkier low end would sharpen it further, but the songwriting range, the acoustic detour and the sheer refusal to flatten these songs make it well worth an hour of anyone’s time. A DIY record with real character, and a Swiss band worth keeping an eye on.
A fully self-produced prog-stoner-doom record that prizes air over polish: the drums sit in a real, airy room, the bass growls with contour, and the mastering resists the loudness war entirely, giving the whole thing genuine depth and dynamic swing. The band keep shifting shape, “The Dragon Song” on a warm, earthy mid-forward fuzz, the title track opening into an organic spacious swing, and “Chakra” a clean fingerpicked acoustic piece with a bowed string that proves there’s more here than riffs, its sequencing into the saturated “Chakra (For Now)” paying off. The weaknesses cluster in the denser tracks: “Necromancer” pushes its high-mids to a fatiguing edge with harsh cymbals and a kick short on push, and “Black Mountain Ritual” and “City of Titans” suffer a low-mid pile-up that smears the bass into the rhythm guitars. Warm, varied and ambitious, tripped up by the occasional murky low end.
Standout tracks: The Dragon Song, Chakra, Black Mountain Ritual
