Our take: Sewercide Records brings us the second 7” EP from this raw underground metal band from their stomping grounds of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Poison Death Noise, despite being only a 7”, is a smorgasbord of raw underground metal sounds. I know nothing about who makes Ritual Warfare’s music, but I picture a total metal fanatic who does nothing but smoke weed, listen to primitive underground metal from the 80s tape trading days, and meticulously revise their own metal masterpieces. While all four tracks on Poison Death Noise channel the raw excitement of outlier 80s metal like NME’s Unholy Death LP, they’re also intricately composed, coming off like mini symphonies influenced by the entire history of underground metal. The title track that leads off the record is fully of knotty rhythmic shifts, its fried production values making it sound coherent despite the music swaying between full-bore death metal and moshy, thrash-style breakdowns. The second track, “Detest,” is just as impressive, starting with scorching guitar work on the death metal intro and moving to a chorus that features a climactic yell of “you fucking piece of shit!” through Sakevi-style distorted and delayed vocals before launching into a blazing guitar solo. You might think the song is winding down, but it’s only halfway done, building a new foundation of Norwegian-style black metal before an extended guitar solo that cycles through numerous movements and musical ideas. They put some work into this guitar solo, and it shows. Yet despite how ambitious Ritual Warfare’s music is, it always sounds raw and direct, just like my favorite under-the-radar 80s classics. A fucking scorcher.