UMUR "Ritual" is the 5th full-length studio album by US death metal act The Black Dahlia Murder. The album was released through Metal Blade Records in June 2011. It´s interesting to note that upon release, an album as relatively extreme as "Ritual", actually debuted at position #31 on the Billboard 200.

The music on the album is technical and melodic death metal played with precision and high skill. The sound production is clean yet not in a sterile lifeless fashion and the powerful sound brings much to the music. The vocals alternate between deep growls and high pitched sceaming. The latter vocal style provides the music with a slight "core" edge, but other than that the music on this album is death metal through and through. The tracks, while memorable and at times even hookladen, are relatively complex. Lots of tempo changes, shredding solos (and very impressive ones I might add) and adventurous and effectful songwriting are some of the words the music conjures up in my mind.

It really should be made abundantly clear that while the band are extremely impressive when it comes to the technical delivery of their music, the songwriting is top notch too. While the songwriting credits on the last two albums by the band went almost solely to guitarist Brian Eschbach, the songwriting for "Ritual", was shared between Eschbach and new guitarist Ryan Knight, who became a member of The Black Dahlia Murder during the recording of "Deflorate (2009)". Maybe the new input has been healthy for the band, because this certainly is a strong album in almost any way possible.

The 12 tracks of high quality technical/melodic death metal, distributed over a 45:30 minutes long playing time, are well written, well produced and, very well played, and therefore a 4 - 4.5 star (85%) rating is fully deserved.