Work’s been a bit slow recently. It’s what’s known in the trade as ‘silly season’ – the time of year when everyone fucks off on holiday and local news just packs its bags for the summer and heads off to Crete. Things got so bad last week that we put a story about a guinea pig getting stuck in a toy car on the front page. I shit you not. Anyway, the gaps of sheer boredom at work have to be filled in somehow (you really think reading the tosh in the forums covers my entire day?) and so I’ve started to revert to listening to a few songs when the corner of my office is short of a few bodies. For the last few weeks there’s only one album that’s dominated the stereo – ‘Ruiner‘.
Now the rest of the office think it’s noisy crap (they listen to James Blunt and think he’s hardcore!), but I reckon this is as powerful and emotive as any record I’ve heard this year. ‘Mute Print’ was amazing, but A Wilhelm Scream have better themselves this time round. It’s Nitro’s best release by a country mile. Once ‘The King Is Dead’ screams out of the stereo with breakneck guitar riffs and some of the sweetest vocal melodies you’ve ever heard, you immediately stop. And think. And your jaw drops. And you go wow. And then your jaw drops even further. This isn’t just good, it’s genre-defining good. The world has lacked an album with balls as big as this for too long.
I could gush on for several thousand words giving an in-depth view on each song individually, but I’d be doing this album a disservice. Every song is a winner. Bill Stevenson and his Blasting Room crew have made this sound huge without neding to layer the record with too many guitars. Did I mention guitars? The axe work on this CD is nothing short of sensational, switching foot-on-monitor metal guitar solos to Rise Against style pedal-to-the-metal punk rock. Of course the whole thing could fall down if Nuno’s vocals weren’t spot on, but they hit the spot and then some. At times there are three-way vocal harmonies which make me go weak at the knees. ‘God Loves A Liar’ has some ‘woaaah’ parts which sound fitter than Rachel Leigh Cook in a bikini. ‘The Kids Can Eat A Bag Of Dicks’ is more technical than the Johan Cryuff school of football tricks. ‘Speed Of Dark’ is just, well, I’m lost for words.
The simple fact is that ‘Ruiner‘ is far and away among the best records of the year. It’s the kind of record that gives an increasingly stale music scene the swift boot up the shitter that it needs. Too many bands are doing the same thing, making A Wilhelm Scream even more refreshingly amazing. If you loved ‘Mute Print’ then ‘Ruiner‘ will make you wet yourself. Seriously. It’s that good.
www.awilhelmscream.com
Nitro Records
Paul