Ramesses

Interview continued. - Juke

photo shoot, Covent Garden, London, 7th July 2010. - Juke

Interview with Adam Richardson, pages 1 & 2 - Juke

All the expected tropes of doom metal are here: rasping vocals; churning enormo-riffs; portentous song titles such as Iron Crow and Baptism of the Walking Dead – and of course, spooky skeletons and demons on the cover. But wait, aren't those actually pictures of Fucking Hell, Jake and Dinos Chapman's grotesque sculpture of Nazi atrocities? Like Take the Curse's artwork, the Dorset three-piece's sturm und drang assault is more affecting and substantial than is initially obvious. Yes, the 10 tracks here are anchored to a mantle of trudging, sludgy riffing, but not at the expense of excursions into other territories: the sinister buzz of black metal or, most profoundly in the case of the title track, melancholy folk-psych melodies. Showing enough musical nous to lift them far above the oversaturated market of down-tuned doommongers, Ramesses have created a hugely impressive second album that demands considered listening. 4/5 - The Guardian

"all the tracks on offer possess an uncanny ability to seep into memory and the result is one of the most diverse and crippling doom albums of recent times. IF there is any justice, Ramesses will get the recognition that they deserve for this and all the infamy that goes along with it." - Rock-A-Rolla

"This second album from the Dorset trio sounds like the apocalypse - and with creepy artwork from the Chapman brothers, looks like it too. It's hellishly loud and laden with sludgy riffs, coruscating vocals and horror B movie samples - exactly what you;d expect from these ex-Electric Wizard magicians. 4/5" - Bizarre Magazine

"Ramesses remain atmospherically unique as their black mantras pile on extra layers of distorted, mutant ear-blubber, sucking all light from the room and pumping every reachable skull with thoughts of dead-eyed despair and sweet, welcome death. Splendid fun, as it turns out. 8/10" - Metal Hammer UK

"Good on Ramesses for fashioning a distinctly British atmosphere of cinematic psych-gloom, the sort of horror that John Wyndham was on about when he sculptured an apocalyptic yarn from mutant daffodils. 8/10" - Terrorizer

Take the Curse CD featured alongside Andy Warhol and Storefront for Art and Architecture - Art Review

"The misanthropy and vocal harshness of black metal cuts through the haze of hallucinogenic doom, splicing the heaviness of Sleep with Darkthrone's evil edge resulting in a thoroughly creepy atmosphere throughout. KKK" - Kerrang!

"Ramesses don't piss about when it comes to delivering weighty slabs of pure, malignant doom. Their sencond full-length, 'Take the Curse' is as dark and claustrophobic as they come, bursting at the seams with massive sludge riffs and enjoyably camp soundbites from 70s horror flicks.' 8/10 - Rock Sound UK

"Quake with mortal dread, you puny mortal fuck. Ramesses crush the jugular with this, their second full-length studio album: a potent fifty-four minute ten-track pleasure cruise through some of the most seductive 'scimitar and fangs' doom-filth that you will hear all year. Top marks to this combustive home-grown power trio for sealing their sound with an originality found nowhere else." - The Sleeping Shaman

with a Fist in the Face of God - VICE UK

in the BUZZ section - NME

July issue - Terrorizer

page 1/2 - The Stool Pigeon

page 2/2 - The Stool Pigeon

page 1/2 - Metal Hammer UK

page 2/2 - Metal Hammer UK

rare interview with all band members! - The Sleeping Shaman

with Adam Richardson. - The Obelisk

NY/NJ/PA weekly - The Aquarian Weekly

featuring the track 'Take the Curse' - BBC Radio 1

featuring the track Khali Mist - BBC Radio 1

Respect!! - Gylve Nagell aka Fenriz

5/5 - top marks! - Brutalism

lovingly pinched from The Obelisk. - Roadburn

featuring the track Khali Mist - NME

6/6 - top marks! - Thrash Hits

interview with Adam Richardson in Sentimiento de Culpa Catolica issue. - VICE España

art talk with Adam Richardson. - The Quietus

Maybe it's down to the fact that Ramesses are two thirds of the old Electric Wizard line up, but there's something about the noises they make that just makes you want to grow a beard, cover your face with your hair and lift your claw sky-wards groaning: "UUUUUURRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHAAAAAA!!!" Oh, wait, I know what it is, it's down to the sheer weight of their often seemingly free-form, skull crushing doom/sludge; so heavy is Take The Curse in parts that you can almost feel your soul being squeezed out through your eyes. The superb cover art – courtesy of Jake and Dinos Chapman – might have something to do with it too. - The Quietus

2009 feature - Metal Hammer UK

4/5 - Kerrang!

7/10 - Metal Hammer UK

8/10 - Terrorizer

2009 - The Sleeping Shaman

2009 - The Sleeping Shaman

Former Electric Wizard members rise again. After influential doom-mongers Electric Wizard dissolved in acrimony, it seemed unlikely that the exiled rhythm section of Tim Bagshaw and Mark Greening would rival mainman Jus Oborne's new line up. But while last year's regrouped Wizard album 'We Live' lacked the edge-of-collapse dynamic of yore, the black sheep have returned as Ramesses with a satisfyingly bloody-minded debut. Like their old band, this is still music to soundtrack mushroom-addled rituals in a Dorset woodland, but when 'Black Domina; proves simultaneously accessible and eerie, it's clear that these guys are no longer in anyone else's shadow. Just those of their own making... KKKK - Kerrang / Olly Thomas

The History of rock'n'roll isn't exactly littered with groups who went on to greater things after going their separate ways. Former tightly-knit creative cores break down into their constituents parts, first impulses are to consolidate rather than expand, and so it seemed to be the case with Electric Wizard. Jus Oborne may have kept the name and template, but with 'We Live' it proved to be a diminishing one, shorn of the dark digressions into the void. Meanwhile, Ramesses - featuring original Wizard bassist, Tim Bagshaw, now on guitar, and drummer Mark Greening - proved to be a satisfying proposition live, in a more concentrated, rock-out fashion, but you could sense that they'd turned their back on their former, visionary excesses.

On the evidence of 'We Will Lead You to Glorious Times', however, Ramesses' narrowing of focus isn't a failure of imagination so much as a sign of newfound purpose, and the four tracks contained herein sees them claiming territory of their own, by means of whacked out brutal force. No longer just marinating in their own bad vibes, they've now directed them outwards to project a lumbering, malignant stomp, one that grows ever more claustrophobic, like the grip of a boa constrictor gradually tightening its prey. Aided by a spare, acrid Billy Anderson production, Ramesses' mode of attack is to fixate themselves on a single, clogged riff throughout the course of a track and then use it a stick to beat you with, until your brain starts to develop kaleidoscopic welts. Even their more languid moments, the spindly, drifting blossoms of guitar leading into the opener 'Witchampton', the Capricorns-esque warmth of 'Black Domina's' intro, only exist as last residues of light to be extinguished once vocalist Adam Richardson's black tar gargle has laid into them, coming on like a diabolical seer. 'Ramesses II's' clattering percussion brings to mind early Swans in its blinkered bleakness, and yet its snaking, filth-encrusted riff weaves back into itself until it threatens to break out of its confines into a full on psychedelic trip.

'...Glorious Times' isn't doom rock as a gateway to the infinite, its a malice-laden tightening of the screw. 7.5 / 10 - Terrorizer / Jonathan Selzer

Gods and Goddesses...this is SO heavy! The ex-Electric Wizard duo of guitarist Tim Bagshaw (previously bass guitar with E.W.) and drummer Mark Greening are about to prove once and for all that the Wizard was not just Jus Oborn & co., nossir! The doom crown is now firmly up for grabs, and Ramesses are making a determined and ferocious play for it. Joined now by Adam Richardson, whose vocals are pure earthshaking death metal in delivery, the unholy triumvirate are as acid-soaked as doomed, and the resultant CDEP is brutally unrelenting, yet curiously hypnotic too...a curious and unnerving combination, yet hugely effective. To describe this album simply as 'doom' is to do it a huge disservice; it's a diseased, leprous,l decaying, festering slime of rotting putrid malevolence...it's a soundtrack to a vision of Hell in necro-colours! The six song disc was decrepitly produced by Billy Anderson (who else?), and is as attractive to casual listeners as a pus-filled open sore. On first listen I genuinely found myself disturbed by the dark depravity of it's bitter and twisted soul, and I fell madly in love...as I still am! 4/6 - Zero Tolerance / Simon Gausden

Two parts Electric Wizard and that full on prog rock drumming of Mark Anthony Greening - a six tracker recorded almost live in the Fortress (London) with legendary dope-hound (so it says here on this press release) Billy Anderson - out on Californian label Devil Doll. It's a dark wooly brooding beast laced with giant slabs of free-form jazz flavored doom rock. Its like getting stuck in the very best treacle and those guitar strings sound like they're each an inch thick - this is heeeeavy heavy psychotic doom stew, and it really really is a churning strew - sounds like some long lost relic from 1972, a treasure. Some of us are more doomed than others, this is bleakest acid deceit. Six totally doomed out bowls of thick thick psychotic psychedelic stoner stew. - Organ Magazine

Oh Monsieurs, with 'zis unholy skull-crushing dirge you are really spoiling us! Hot on the heels of February's 'We Will Lead You to Glorious Times' comes the latest EP from Ramesses, the band formed by Tim Bagshaw and Mark Greening after leaving Electric Wizard in 03. Sticking primarily to what they know best, 'The Tomb' brings together fours slabs of vicious bone-rattling doom, all lovingly committed to tape by dread-headed master of sludge, Billy Anderson. A tangible air of suffocating claustrophobia permeates throughout its half-hour duration, something that is further enhanced by Adam Richardson's truly gruesome death metal growls. And while a decent but ill-fitting 70's style jam spoils the mood towards the end, it fails to overshadow the fact that Ramesses are currently one of the most important bands in UK metal. Now hurry up with that full-length already... 8/10 - Rock Sound UK / Mike Kemp

With former members of Electric Wizard involved, Ramesses were always going to be monstrously heavy, so it'll come as no surprise when 'The Tomb' causes your bowel to collapse and your eardrums to pop like cheap balloons. This is bleak, sludgy doom at its most hostile; a drawn-out, torturous swamp of lobotomised Sabbath riffs and tonsil grating howls. You could really ruin a good party with this. - Kerrang / Anthems Section

Formed after bassist (now guitarist) Tim Bagshaw and drummer Mark Greening split from Electric Wizard, Ramesses carry on the pure tradition of English doom horror. Although there are only four tracks on this MCD, they are songs that you can get totally lost in; 'Omniversal Horror' is a particularly nasty place to be. 7/10 - Classic Rock / Tommy Udo

With Electric wizard having opted to plough a somewhat more straightforward furrow with 'We Live', it's been left to spin-off combo Ramesses to carry on mining the cosmic filth which Wizard once called their own. Ramesses specialise in taking one central riff and pounding it into dust before blasting the debris into oblivion, as evidenced by the trance-like seven-minute title track and 'Cult of Cyclops'. 'Unholy Outburst #3' is a ten-minute jam which touches upon more traditional stoner territory where an effects-laden Hawkwind freakout morphs into a rhythmic tribal invocation, which in turn disintegrates into fuzz-soaked cacophony before returning to the ether. 8/10 - Terrorizer / Damien

'Tonight is a sort of neat snapshot of where we are at with doom metal in the 21st century. Formed by Tim Bagshaw and Mark Greening after the split in Electric Wizard a couple of years ago, Ramesses play the sort of Sabbathian heavy as lead doom as their previous band, albeit fully aware that it is not, in fact, 1971 anymore.' 7/10 - Metal Hammer / Tommy Udo

'...Ramesses are a trio based around bile, fetid despair and general blackness of existence but surprisingly they put smiles on punter's faces, even if the mid-paced sludge threatens to flatten the club. People in the know expect nothing less, given this group features two ex members of Electric Wizard. True doom rarely hits Manchester, yet in an ironic twist, the heaviest band to grace its shitty streets have only travelled up from Dorset.' - Metal Hammer / Paul Stenning