Underwhelming debut lacks punch
If I had a few quid for every band album, EP, single, Mp3 that I've heard this year when you can tell that the band somehow think they are far heavier, far better, and far more impressive than any other band out there at the moment, I would be quite well off. Not millionaire bathing in champagne, living in Monaco well off, but a couple of good, long haul holidays a year with a nice new, reliable car in the drive and some money in the bank well off . I'm not quite sure what it is, whether it is the aggressive sloganeering on the press release, the moody band pictures or the often pretentious CD art, there is something that gives you that instantaneous drop in your belly feeling which signals that disappointment is on the cards as well as a hefty amount of regret that you will never get that forty minutes you spent listening to the album back.
If you haven't guessed already by the all too kind intro to this review, this was another one of those regrettable lasers to CD moments of this year. Despite being together for the past six years, To the Ruin of All, marks the band's first proper full length release and it fails to impress in many ways. Musically it sounds like a mish mash of very mediocre rock bands, all too average to give the oxygen of publicity to. Despite citing Machine Head, Slipknot and Pantera as their influences, this album lacks any of their musical heroes' gusto or talent and they have failed to create an original noise like their mentors in favour of just recycling some old riffs from
Lyrically, the band don't fare any better. "Psycho II" offers us "Slashed feet bled/Beer drips down/You were left for dead/Prettier in Pale" and fails to make any impact or sense and "Jacknife" provides " Dog Blind/Black Mind/Crackin' your eyes/Well you gotta rise" is also mind boggling in its listing of seemingly random words. You don't really feel that you have someone soul on display here.
This is an intensely disappointing album. Despite having a throng of fans in their native North-West, this fails to make an impact. Plagued by unoriginality and an inherent sense that the band thinks it is far heavier and ultimately better than they really are, this is just merely an unimpressive and unambitious offering.