Destructors 666 Split,
The RuinedJust as in football there's a Savage for every Henry and in cinema a Sandler for every Pacino, for every excellent Ruined track there’s a desultory effort from the Destructors. One is tempted to suggest that the straight-down-the-middle chasm in quality is necessary for the balance of the universe; but, most likely, one will simply exercise the skip button for three of the six tracks on offer here.
What The Ruined do well (nay, extremely well) is write and play good songs. Strip away the horrorpunk gimmick and you’re left with a band that knows its way around a structure and could pull a melody out of a cow’s arse with a pair of tweezers. ‘She Must Die’ and ‘Zombie Takedown’ are exemplary in their consistency, a marriage of catchy vocals harmonies and enough punk rock balls to allow them to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with any young band from the UK. Take them as the soundtrack to a B-Movie if you must, but delve slightly beneath the surface and you’ll find a band with a sense of humour as acute as is their considerable abilities.
But the presence of The Destructors is what stops this EP getting an overall decent score. Yes, they play competent old-school punk but with no development or redeeming features whatsoever. While they bemoan the stagnation of society in ‘1989’ the brutal irony is that they are using a musical mode that was archaic two decades ago, let alone next to the relative sophistication of, ooooh, electricity. Pointless, in a word.
So it’s a shame that there are three Destructors songs to slowly suck the quality away. Treat this is a Ruined EP with three extended skits between songs, because if you do then you’ll see that they’re one of the country’s brightest hopes, and a rare talent in a genre that is in constant danger of disappearing in a flood of mascara.
Ben
