Rusty Pacemaker is a one man band project out of Lanzenkirchen, Austria. Inspired by the late Bathory mastermind Quorthon, Rusty (his pseudonym) linked up with drummer Franz Löchinger and female vocalist ‘Lady K’ to complete the second album of his project – Ruins. Described as a dark and emotional journey where the listener gets to know themselves and Rusty through his music, let’s see what we find out.
The dark lyrical themes of the album are reflected in the sound Rusty takes his music in. It’s dark, moody and very atmospheric at times, but for all the good arrangements and subtle touches to really create a unique atmosphere, the vocals really hamper it. Whilst Rusty may be spilling his soul or urging us to look at our darker sides, his vocals sound like… well, to put it in a way which isn’t offensive… Like an Arnold Schwarzenegger doing a Kermit the Frog impression. Granted, this is a unique take on vocals and it does set Rusty apart from other dark rock/metal type acts with their gothic influences and dramatic deep or raspy vocal stylings, it just takes away from the whole experience and is rather distracting.
Atmosphere wise, the majority of the tracks do well once you learn to blank out Kermit. It’s slow paced for the majority of the album, almost bordering on doom but not quite and it does have some good riffs and heavy sections, but it’s rather straight forward and very repetitive. The simplistic approach may work sometimes but it really does sound like the songs were pieced together in an effort to get them done and something out for the sake of it. Yes, this might contradict some of what I said before in one light but whilst it does create a good atmosphere, it comes across more as someone finding their musical direction as opposed to knowing what they want something to sound like and creating that sound and being confident in said sound.
The only track which really stood out to me was track number 2 – “Made of Lies” which has a great groove to it, some melodic hooks and despite its dark and moody atmosphere, a rather upbeat feel to it, kind of like a fast paced goth rock style track but with a lot less grandeur about it.
On the whole, despite several listens I just couldn’t take to this album. It had some moments of promise but the vocals, so lifeless, passionless and well, distracting and awful killed it off big. I can look past vocals most of the time to appreciate the music, but even when I managed to do that, it just seemed to lack that spark to make it stand out. If it wasn’t for the atmosphere and feel of the album, this would have got lower.
(3/10 Fraggle)
Leave a Reply