Release of the Day: Into The Thicket - Dark Night of the Soul

Ritual is a bit of a loaded term. Alone, it doesn't mean much other than "a repeatable instance" but it can take on much greater spiritual, metaphysical tones or become low, conniving, and greedy.To begin, let's think about the Casino. A professional gambler may go through the ritual of blowing on dice, wearing glasses to the poker table, ordering the same drink with each hand, all done in serving the god of chance. A baseball enthusiast might wear a "lucky hat" to a game to invoke the god of sport. A priest in a Catholic church goes through ritual upon ritual in schooling in order to eventually perfect the rituals of sacrament and performance in worship of the Christian God.

But ritual is also not a snap. It is the preparation for the harbinger and its eventual fruition. To bring us closer to the idea of Into The Thicket, in Chaos Magick, the magician starves him or herself, prepares his or her magickal weapon, takes hallucinogenic drugs, deprives him or herself of sleep, and prepares the olfactory, visual, and auditory aids to summon a spirit or demon. Through disorientation and provocation, a monster tears through the veil. I can't say that I've seen Into the Thicket engage in one of their recording rituals, but judging from their music, and the few pictures and videos I've seen, I imagine that I'm not too far off in thinking they may have some knowledge of the aforementioned practices.

Into the Thicket makes ritual industrial music using the bones of animals, electronics, and more. But there is a vision too that certainly has a lot to do with their locale. The group comes from (and lives in) the Florida swamp, encumbered by its miasma and distaste for "civilization." This isn't to say that the music is unwieldy, but rather that CT Corrigan and Ryan Debile are familiar with the idea of nature's dominance and know how to engage it and appeal to it. Rather than be afraid of the sublime, Into the Thicket takes the role of the shaman, channeling it, which is ultimately where the release gets its power.