THE HEMULIC VOLUNTARY BAND

The Hemulic Voluntary Band, Ritual´s fourth studio album, with its folk flavour, complex variations, unusual instruments and childlike inspiration, fulfils the journey of this band into a really progressive musical realm. All the tracks but 'In The Wild' inspired by Tove Jansson´s novels, it has beautiful polyrhythm, amazing arrangements and Patrik Lundström´s awesome vocals. You can find influences from Gentle giant, Jethro Tull and so on, but always with Ritual´s own personality which includes a lot of swing, as in the track that opens the album. Emotion is the main character here, with delightful themes like 'Late In November', a song full of sweet melancholy emphasized by the nyckelharpa and other traditional instruments. My favourite song is the one that opens the album and, of course, 'A Dangerous Journey', a 27 minutes long epic, a marvellous fairytale a la 'Alice in Wonderland'. Its first nine minutes are acoustic (guitar, bouzouki, harmonium, nyckelharpa), and then it becomes electric, sometimes in a jazz-night-club mood. No place for boredom in this stupendous work. Five stars.