The fourth album from the Swedish band Ritual, “The Hemulic Voluntary Band,” is a certified classic and was originally released in 2007 and sold over 5000 units.
On August the 15th, it will finally be available again both on CD and for the first time on vinyl (transparent blue)! Tempus Fugit, who released the first version, found two boxes with promo CDs in a corner, and was kind enough to send them to us. So, the first 200 pre-orders of the vinyl will get an original promo CD from 2007.
Ritual has this to say about the album:
If there is one of our albums that we feel deserves a re-release, and above all: to also be released on vinyl, it is The Hemulic Voluntary Band. It was our fourth studio album and by then we had acquired some confidence in our craft. The previous albums were in a way a maturation process that landed in The Hemulic Voluntary Band. We felt safe in our creativity and dared to leave all external considerations aside and just let ourselves go, sort of in our own world. We also felt confident enough to finally make a longer, epic composition for the first time – music that told a story. In that song – A Dangerous Journey – we were once again inspired by Tove Jansson’s Moomin world. It’s basically an adventurous and very dynamic album which is very dear to us. Interestingly enough, it became not only our most progressive album up to that point, but also our most successful.
We are incredibly proud and happy that Karisma is now re-releasing Hemulic, and that we now can listen to it on vinyl too. For this occasion, the album has been carefully re-mastered and sonically refined for both CD and vinyl by the legendary Hans Fredriksson. And Canelita’s amazing cover art certainly deserves the larger LP format!
Pre-Order the album on Karisma Official Webshop and Bandcamp