Last year, I had the fortune to review a brace of musical products from Ireland’s best-kept metal secret, For Ruin, for this very august organ (you can find them on these pages). The then-promised follow-up EP to last year’s “Elapse”, named appropriately “Relapse” has just dropped, and this then is the lowdown on this collection of four tracks.
Once again produced by the guitarist and The Crown supremo Marko Tervonen, “Relapse” follows a similar pattern in melancholy, baroque death metal which has hefty dollops of Katatonia and Paradise Lost influences among the more savage moments. Atmospheric opener “Devout” leads into the catchy as all-hell “Only the Dead”, which comes across like the bastard child of a track from Paradise Lost’s classic “Gothic” and Amorphis’ early works from “Tales from the Thousand Lakes”. The infectious almost folk influence on the main chorus riff is catchier than a Velcro jumper made out of fish-hooks.
“In Vein” is very much in the latter mid-period of Paradise Lost mold, being a clean vocalled hard rock song with some heavy metal guitars across the chorus. Frankly, this was a bit of a duffer for me. I just couldn’t get along with the clean vocals – and to be fair I think Nick Holmes sucked when he went for this approach too. Maybe if you’re a bigger fan than I of that post-Depeche Mode era you’ll dig this, but for me on repeated listens the emotion it most clearly elicited was desire – that is desire to hit the skip track button. That being said, there is a really tasty guitar solo tucked away at the tail end of the song, it’s just that you’ll have to wade through the rest of it to get there.
Luckily, “Bastion” finds them back on track, with a much more ferocious dollop of healthy aggression and harsh-throated bellowing. At this point, they have written another great number that manages to keep the abrasion and grit they possess, but with still managing to work in great melodies.
I am still of the opinion that For Ruin are a fantastic band, and really should be signed up. In terms of criticism – ah, well, I could pretty much do without ever hearing “In Vein” again, and from time to time the guitar sound can be a little thin to my ears, but with some fantastic playing, song-writing and knack for marrying brutality with being memorable, they really need a much broader audience.
(7.5/10 Chris Davison)
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