Ritual Bronze | Ritual Bronze

Description

Ritual Bronze is a new band from Cleveland, Ohio, featuring Ryan Hardwick, frontman of hardcore band Last Gasp, whose self-titled debut LP draws deeply from the well of early-millennium emo. Bands like On the Might of Princes, The Casket Lottery, and Appleseed Cast are clear touchstones, but the record arrives with the urgency and emotional weight of something written in the present tense. Recorded across two sessions and finished in early 2026, the EP is a meditation on the things that quietly hollow you out: addiction and substance abuse, love that fractures in strange and uncanny ways, the disorientation of growing older inside a subculture built for the young, and the particular political despair of living under the shadow of authoritarianism. What’s remarkable is that none of it collapses under its own grief. These songs have heart, and they breathe. “Brave Little Bird” stands as the emotional center of the record, a song about watching a child grow up, about helping fill out high school forms and knowing that college forms, and an empty nest, are not far behind. It’s the kind of writing that catches you off guard, the kind that stays. Ritual Bronze plays emo music the way it was meant to be played: with restraint where restraint is needed and with everything else when it isn’t. This is a debut that announces a band worth following closely.

Track Listing

1. 40 Year Corpse (6:09)
2. Brave Little Bird (3:25)
3. Visceral Passion (3:50)
4. Loss of Interest in the Unenhanced World (5:01)
5. Ornament (1:56)
6. Perished (Deep Sigh for Democracy) (6:20)
7. Memories Lodged in the Nervous System (3:44)
8. Rust Belt Desperation (4:07)
9. Tortured Artist (5:28)