Artist: For Ruin
Title: Last Light
Type: Album
Label: Casket Music

Blimey, did this come out in 2009 ? The runner up for my album of the year in these hallowed pages that very same year, “Last Light” has finally been re-released through Casket Music / Copro in these shores and given wider worldwide distribution via those awfully nice chaps at Plastic Head. This is very good news for you indeed. Why so ? Because, you fool, Last Light has lost none of its potency, inventiveness or atmosphere in the last couple of years.

Indeed, the only thing to have happened to For Ruin has been the raising of their profile. “Last Light” is an incredibly textured listen, with the melancholic fragility of the icy guitars washing over the rasping, desperate vocals. Taking their cues from prime era Katatonia and Shades of God Paradise Lost, For Ruin produced an album with a singular vision for all things downcast and dejected. The likes of “Decline” and “Solace” give an atmosphere of being thoroughly and utterly pissed off, while simultaneously feeling massively ruined and broken. It’s this glass-fragile brittle sound that permeates the album every bit now as much as it did then. They have the rousing numbers, such as the positively boisterous “Recoil”, brimming as it is with cheeky melodic guitar flourishes among the muscular riffing. Likewise, the balls-out thrashing of “Crawl” ensures that although tone and texture remain important to Last Light, they retain the fury to provide aggression and thorough bred metal credentials.

For Ruin have now re-released this absolute corker of an album through all the normal e-commerce and old fashioned shop style merchants. One can only hope that the band manage to get the proper amount of advertising. This is really a lush package; from the striking and beautiful cover art to the immensely well-wrought song writing craft and attention to detail. For those of us who were convinced of their skills first time round of asking, this might not be an essential purchase. One bonus remixed track from their debut album “December” may not be enough to convince you to buy this again. That being said, if you are desperately unlucky enough not to already have this well hidden little corker in your collection, this is the definitive way to listen. Don’t be a mug and miss out twice.

www.myspace.com/forruinband

Chris Davison

MTUK HOME