Released on CD via Small Doses and available at
www.small-doses.com/newsblog/?page_id=14 or from Whitehorse direct.
Come is a nice slim line card gatefold cover, pro pressed CD.
Originally and still available via Cvlt Nation at
www.cvltnation.com/whitehorse-live-ritual-streamdownload-tour-dates/
Review from The Gumshoe Groove:
"I couldn’t believe all the bands/entities called “whitehorse” floating in the internet’s final frontier. If google is correct, Whitehorse could either be:
a doom-metal band from Australia;
a bro-and-sis combo featuring a grip of incestual overtures;
a harsh-noise solo act from the dude who brought you Black Leather Jesus and Last Rape;
the capitol of Yukon;
a motorcycle-gear site …
The material found within the crusted edges of Live Ritual: July 25th 2011 is worth going through hell over because it’s extreme in every way: Sludgy, slooooowwwww to the point of sloth, deep and dank, guttural … kind of like a dead wolf’s asshole that you can listen to, when it comes down to it (that is fucking disgusting; sorry), though it smells slightly better.
The vocals register high on the ragged Richter scale, somewhere between Aaron Turner of Isis, the dude from Carcass, the latter-day Zao vocalist and maybe that crazy fucker from Strife. But this is tamped further underground; those four sound almost Lady Gaga-ish compared to this deep-churning frog-croaker, yet the frosty belches and raspy pleas never rankle the ear. Think of them as another instrument, thickening the ghoul-green, soupy mix like crumbled crackers and allowing the listener to wade through the muck of 10-minute songs without getting completely lost.
So please: Put your goddamn skull-stomping boots and a combat helmet on if you plan on foraging through this thicket, as the bulbous riffs and plodding post-Melvins/-Torche/-Cathedral/-Bloodlet/-Crowbar drums will pound your cranium till your head’s full of brain-blood. I say embrace the wrath; drink it in and let its grey-black cloak envelope you and, eventually, enslave you.
As you sink deeper, the production becomes more of a focal point because few, if any, of the little distinctions would rise to the surface if the dude in the engineering chair had failed to separate the three or four elements that formulate the Whitehorse sound. And wouldn’t you know it: This is actually a live recording! I assumed this was a studio document until I heard the brave souls clapping between songs.
Another thing: As much as I dig-dug the simpler plods, my heart rests with the tracks, such as the fourth one, that glide along a little less and herk and jerk a little more, adding crunch to the metal recipe at work and giving the ear more to latch onto. Overall, however, to be immersed in Whitehorse is to be ensconced in a blinding-bright coffin of doom with no air to breath and no spirits to guide you. The swathes of slow-mo doom-metal are incredibly bulky, rumbling and thrumming.
I’m still not sure how Whitehorse hit that spot where they’re methodical yet intense, simple yet nuanced, tough yet atmospheric; my conclusion is this: metalheads are a lot more complicated than they used to be. That, or they’re just not as shy about showing it. And that’s a pleasing development because I’ve always, whether overtly or secretly, been one of them."