RUINOUS POWER

RUINOUS POWER     “EXTREME DANGER: ProtoType Weaponry”

By Dr. Abner Mality

Another of the many collaboration projects on the I, Voidhanger label, RUINOUS POWER features members of MITOCHONDRION, AUROCH, ATEMPORAL and more. As might be expected, this is a kind of “egghead” death metal that comes across more as an intellectual exercise than dudes out to fuck shit up.

Not to say that shit doesn’t get fucked here. There’s definitely some aggressive death on tap, but merged with progressive time signatures, odd sound collage excursions and a curious feeling of detachment that kind of keeps you from just running around the room and wrecking your neck. The production does have an organic feel, which many technical bands lack, but it seems strangely muffled, with no cutting edges. The result is RUINOUS POWER is kind of hard to connect with.

The album starts with by far the longest track, “But What of Sacred Mars?”, which begins with bass and drum noises, morphs into a really savage attack of jagged riffing and settles down into something still heavy but a lot more prog in nature. Of the remaining cuts, only one exceeds four minutes. “The Long Game” and “Kneel” feature some pretty off-kilter moments and it’s obvious Sebastian Montesi and Shawn Hache are not too interested in groovy caveman riffs. The title track is a rather disappointing avant-garde ambient piece and “Engine Kill” has one of the goofiest riffs I’ve ever heard. As if to atone, “Cerebral Malefice” and “Desecration of the Host” are pretty much ravaging death metal not too far from IMMOLATION.

This is not a bad album by any stretch, but that feeling of detachment is overwhelming. I just couldn’t hook into this as much as I would like.

I, VOIDHANGER RECORDS 

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