Rockin' With Passion
In a genre where the music can sometimes take a backseat to the ego fed posturing that helps to fuel the image clambering, it's refreshing to find a band that are still all about the music. Aussie rockers Dead City Ruins actually formed in the UK back in 2007 before heading back home in 2010 to regroup, two EP's later and luckily for us, the quintet are back with their debut album, Midnight Killer, a full scale attack of sleaze driven riffs, heavy metal beats and enough laid back, blues tinged rock to make you chill out whilst rocking the night away.
With a healthy and heavy nod towards Appetite For Destruction era Guns N Roses, Midnight Killer bolts out of the starting blocks with the juggernaut pace of Where You Gonna Run, which wields a lethal concoction of head banging beats and finger defying riffs that are more than happy to pummel you into submission as the Aussie five piece give you a break neck paced introduction into their world, and let's just say its recommended you just sit back and enjoy the ride.
It's LA's Sunset Strip meets the Steel City and whilst this might not be a bolt out of the blue, something which has been tried before, Dead City Ruins do it with a style that just screams for your attention, throw in a competence and unapologetic passion for the music and the boys from Down Under have not only leapt all current competition, they have left them far behind. Damn My Eyes continues along the same lines, throwing in perhaps a few more heavy, sleazed laced riffs to sink your teeth into before Mai Lai Massacre makes its stealth attack, subtly getting underway before unleashing a barrage of riffs that all but define sleaze rock down to its core and which undoubtedly will have fans of the genre drooling at the mouth, but it is title track, Midnight Killer which slays them all. A full blown, balls to the wall hunk of rock, Midnight Killer instantly goes for the jugular, throwing out an assault of riffs, dirty, blues toned beats and vocals that all but whisper in your ear before soaring to heights which seem almost impossible.
Dead City Ruins are not rewriting music history with Midnight Killer, there is not genre refining work at play instead this is an album that oozes quality, that radiates with the band's passion for music and which proves to all the fake wannabes that style and image posturing doesn't comes before the music and for the 33 odd minutes that Midnight Killer lasts, Dead City Ruins will undoubtedly reassure all that rock is very much alive and kicking.