Unravelling the mystery that is Cult Ritual

A dig through the legendary hardcore punk band’s recently rediscovered discography

Cult Ritual, a short lived Tampa Bay band who gained a small but rabid following in just three years of existence, recently uploaded their music onto streaming services.

That’s a big deal. The band are legends of “mysterious guy hardcore”, a rather descriptive moniker given to artists who floated in the Youth Attack Records scene of the mid-late 2000s. Those bands were notorious for having little online presence or available information. Many of them are still hard to find. Cult Ritual’s decision to upload their entire discography onto streaming is notable in that it 1) abandons some of the core ethos behind what those bands were doing and 2) makes that era a bit more accessible to people who’ve joined the fold in the last 15 years.

As for the first point, who gives a shit? I was late to the game for the whole Youth Attack hype train. Cult Ritual broke up in 2009, a full year before I started going to shows, and by the time I entered the fold, people had soured on the “we’re too cool to promote our band” gimmick. I tried to hear some of this stuff, but it wasn’t easy to find, plus it was dense and inaccessible musically.

The people involved in this scene also got painted as assholes. I guess the exclusionary hipness drew tourists and dorks to these shows like flies to shit. I couldn’t say. I was terminally online via the Punknews board, arguing with balding pop-punk fans about La Dispute. I didn’t know any of these people in real life.

All this is to say the exposure matters. Cult Ritual’s discography is as new to me as it is to my youngest homies, who would probably guess SQRM was a Grand Theft Auto radio station. I had some reservations based on this scene’s reputation and my past attempts to connect with it, but I was delighted to find that Cult Ritual is not only good, but lowkey influential on a big swath of what’s happening nowadays.

People would make fun of this scene for saying “we just like raw punk hardcore, maaaaaan” when the bands were clearly going for “a thing”. This sound certainly hit a self-referential saturation point, but I think “raw punk” is a good way to describe Cult Ritual’s first couple records at least. The first demo — self released in 2006 — has the noodly guitars and vocal delivery of Black Flag, stompy mosh parts like Bad Brains or Negative Approach, and the misanthropic production style of Void. It’s got that and not much else — a pretty bare bones but effective attempt at channeling the best of early 80’s hardcore. It’s raw. It’s punk. It’s awesome.

They followed the demo up with a proper EP on Burrito records in 2007. The sound is a tiny bit heavier. There are some dirgy riffs in the vein of Black Flag’s My War, but the songs are still pretty short. A couple tracks from the demo are re-recorded on here. Cult Ritual’s MO throughout their career was to self release a cassette demo, then release an EP on a label with some re-recordings and some new songs a few months later.

They ended up releasing a handful of songs three times across their career. One of those songs, “Guiltless”, opens the second demo. The track is an absolute mess, chewing on riffs for just enough time to hit a groove before frantically changing pace amid a swirl of feedback and clipping cymbals. It’s the start of some experimental growth from the band. The songs start getting a little longer on the second demo tape, with the introduction of a noise element and more dirge in the tempos. The b-side is two songs long, and serves as a canary in the coal mine for the band’s future — a cover of the Los Angeles post-punk band X and a nine minute wall of noise called “Cancer Money”. This record is where the band starts to come into their own musically.

The next EP — Cult Ritual’s first release for Youth Attack — is probably the best representation of them. I think the first demo is just as enjoyable, but the second EP showcases the group at their peak. It’s just four songs, all bangers, with perfectly miserable production and captivating album art.

I feel kinda weird talking about an album cover in a music review, but the Youth Attack scene of this era was big on aesthetics. This art jumps into my mind first when I think about Cult Ritual. The record is also the first appearance of the song “Civilized”, which I think is the band’s most iconic track. It blends big, ringing barre chords with feral aggression before completely devolving into noise. It’s a perfect encapsulation of what Cult Ritual is about, and I love it.

Like I said before, the band were serial fit repeaters when it came to re-recording songs. The only fresh material on their third demo/EP cycle are covers. The second half of the third demo is recordings from a live set, including a cover of a later era Black Flag song. Their third EP — released on Drugged Conscience— is arguably their most professional sounding record, but it’s just two previously released tracks and a Sonic Youth cover.

I’m not sure what type of neurosis compelled them to re-record songs so often, but that approach made it possible to churn out releases at an alarming rate. They dropped eight studio projects and a live album between 2006 and 2009. That’s a lot of output for a short lived group.

Hardcore bands, as the joke goes, usually put out an iconic demo, a classic 7”, a bad full length, and then break up. Cult Ritual have much more music than that, and their LP isn’t bad. Still, there’s something to be said about the self awareness to call it quits at the right time.

I don’t want to say Cult Ritual was “over it” by the time they dropped their Youth Attack LP, but you can clearly hear them pulling from the well of non-hardcore influence they were hinting at on their covers. The first side is mostly hardcore songs, but leaning more melodic. You can maybe hear a bit of Rev Summer influence, especially on the song “Failed”, which stumbles sloppily into a triumphant, melodic climax akin to early DC emo or the post-punk that scene was inspired by.

The last track on the A-side and the two tracks from the B-side are much more experimental. “Saturday’s Blood” starts with three and a half minutes of droning drums before launching into two minutes of actual music. “Last Time” starts as a sound collage that climaxes into a stompy noise-rock track. The album’s final song is a re-recording of “Cancer Money” from the second EP, with an extra couple minutes of feedback at the end.

Those three tracks, in addition to being noisy and experimental, showcase a lot more of what Cult Ritual was exploring on their various covers than their original music. I’m not sure if I need them. Someone out there probably thinks this is the band’s best material, but I doubt that person goes to hardcore shows anymore. Again, the LP isn’t bad by any stretch of the imagination, but the band’s original mission had clearly run its course. They broke up instead of trying to beat a dead horse, and probably went out at the peak of their popularity. Ian MacKaye would be proud.

As for Cult Ritual’s legacy, it’s easy to draw a line directly from their early catalog to stuff like Spy, Gel and Gag. 80’s hardcore revivalism was everywhere in the 2000’s, but the Youth Attack kids were particularly concerned with the nasty bits. Cult Ritual’s noisiness, heavily affected vocals and high contrast imagery were almost certainly a blueprint for the black t-shirt pogo punk of today. The first couple Cult Ritual releases are also pretty heavy, which makes me think they would easily appeal to fans of Spy in particular — and that’s just the biggest ripple in the pond.

People have been ripping this band and scene off for fifteen years now. It took a while for this sound to regain the legs it had when it first made a splash, but in the intervening decade, kids who cut their teeth watching Cult Ritual in basements and DIY spaces took the thread of antagonistic, misanthropic hardcore punk and ran a thousand different directions with it. This is influential on everything from bands like Full of Hell and Candy to the Lumpy Records scene. It’s been covered in dust for the past decade, but with the streaming release, there’s never been a better time to brush it off and revisit.