The face-melting Detroit quintet has made a career out of being unpredictable - as well as unhinged, unclassifiable and unrepentant, all in the best possible ways. But with RITUAL, it's fifth full-length album, the extreme metal troupe found fertile territory in the wide world of those prescribed practices that would seem verboten to a band that's always marched to the double-time beat of it's own drummer. Following up 2009's acclaimed DEFLORATE, which brought The Black Dahlia Murder the highest Billboard chart positions of it's 10-year career, RITUAL revels in both conceptual ambition and equally striking musical growth from a band that's pushed itself into more extreme and challenging territory on each successive release.