RITUAL fronted By Bill Farley is a New Jersey Based band, which have longevity to their repertoire. The new release is the “Best of RITUAL” two-CD pack. “Prince of Pain” is a total classic tune with hard driving guitars. Vocally Farley reminds me of classic Alice Cooper/Kix. To my amazement as long as these guys been around I never saw them live. Track-three “Dark Star” is just one kick ass tune. It's melodic with great vocals and a good mix of guitar and keyboards. “The Razors Edge” has the feel of Kix "Don't Close Your Eyes”. Disc one tracks 1 thru10 are new tracks 11 thru 15 are classic. Disc two tracks 1 thru 6 are classic tracks 7 thru 12 are acoustic and tracks 13 thru 15 are live. Since I really heard RITUAL, I figured by track-10 I would have been bored by now, but “The Gathering” held my attention thru both discs. The classics tunes will bring back memories of the great music of the eighties. You will say to yourself man that song reminds me of this song or that song but it is RITUAL at their finest. The best track of the classic tunes is track-six on disc two called "Love in The Shadows" if this song was brought up to date with better production this is a hit. I am a big fan of acoustic music. I think it brings out the reality of the musician. You really get to hear how good each musician plays or sings. Even know you can clean it up a bit in the studio I think most of the time the natural feeling is heard. RITUAL does a suburb job on the six acoustic tracks. The last three songs are live and I am not going to comment on those because the rest of the CD's stand for itself. If you never heard RITUAL and want to hear, some fantastic, classic hard rock get this 2CD set.

Band Lineup:

Track Listing:

Disc One

Disc Two