siLLy puPPy
The generically named RUIN is one of many death metal bands that formed all the way back during the old school boom, in this case 1990 but due to a complete implosion disbanded in 1991 before anything could find a release. Like mutant strains of bacteria though, some things never die and the band only lay dormant before returning in 2015 to start its proper old school death metal career.
Preferring to remain mysterious AF, this RUIN (amongst a dozen plus other bands of the same name) first emerged in the graveyard city of Colma, CA which is a tiny little town south of San Francisco where all the cemeteries were created before the little town incorporated into a little shopping center city of its own right. Ironically the town has only 1500 inhabitants but if one were to count the dead then it would be around 1.5 million! Now what a perfect place for a death metal band to emerge!
The band has since relocated to Phelan, CA, a desert town north of San Bernardino. Picked up by the Memento Mori label, RUIN’s debut DROWN IN BLOOD came out in 2017. With a promise to be America’s version of Finland’s Abhorrence or Denmark’s Undergang, RUIN crafts a murky primeval form of death metal that sounds like a demo from the 1980s from a band that is a muddy mix of first wave black metal, thrash metal and the earliest birth pangs of the death metal experience. Featuring eight tracks at around 37 minutes, DROWN IN BLOOD is like the soundtrack for your sewer pipes.
This is perhaps one of the most lo-fi death metal releases i’ve ever heard. It’s like a mono 78 shellac recording from the early 20th century in production quality however it is a bit charming in a monstrous yet ominous suffocating way. The album graces the soul with charming tracks such as the opening “Crawling Through The Vomit” and “Spread Plague Hell.” Unfortunately the tracks lack variation and pretty much sound like one similar chug-a-thon after another. The closest American band i can compare with is early Autopsy but RUIN delivers a very generic version of what that band’s demo material sounds like. While listenable and not without its positive points such as the occasional Morbid Angel salute via the guitar screeches, the album is fairly average.
Yes, this is one of those old school death metal copycats that excels in a one-dimensional approach which will appeal to those who yearn for those days of yore but honestly this album is so generic that it’s basically just a rehash of what’s been done a million times over. It’s too bad because i really want to like a death metal band coming from Colma, CA but unfortunately this band has stuck to its guns and settled on a rather uninventive style of playing while the bulk of modern death metal has moved on into strange new hybrids of prog metal, psychedelia and technicalities. Not bad but not great. Love the murky evil as fuck vibe here but not impressed by the mediocrity in the musicianship. This is death metal after all!