Like all cool hip and happening albums these days In Ruins is out on Cassette as well as cd and download from In Ruins at Bandcamp and it's well worth getting.
The album opens with The Engineering Of Consent: it could be an early 90's style sample-heavy tune with a very cool rap (partly by William S Burroughs) about the nature of time over a chilled backing that gets more and more under my skin with every listen; the slow pulsing sounds drawing the listener in at the start of this journey into the ruins.
Miet Mitzvah also has a chilled and laid back opening but with vocals from the singer (who for this album has become Andreas Baader) who deadpans that entertainment has become a form of torment but this song certainly isn't. It then has bursts of slightly stoned guitars firing off like a Catherine wheel over the backing as the vocals get doubled and the song builds like Spiritualized meets Luna.
White Noise And Bleak Horizons sound not unlike how you might expect a song with that title to sound although the sounds could have been a bit more abrasive. It is mightily claustrophobic with a pulsing beat and sinister snare drum sound as the rest of the sound envelopes you.
In Catching Up With Morrison, the backing sounds like detuned sirens over acoustic guitars that give an edge of paranoia to the simple sounding yet not so simple music. On repeated listening this would be my pick for a single although it is in no way a pop song.
Black September ups the paranoia with odd screams and wails over the seemingly gentle music and lyrics of despair and desperation. It's enough to send any gentle souls over the edge looking for that perfect human among the anger and spite spiralling into insanity as the lyrics would have it.
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Prosopagnosia keeps the paranoia up as they sing about thinking about you all the time and switching it to also state "if I can't have you I don't see why anyone else should" all over a minimal almost trip-hop backing.
The two versions of Presley Honey merge and diverge to keep the listener looking over the shoulder for where the next disturbing twist will come from at the back of the cinema as his girlfriend starts to channel Elvis, which sounds rather scary. The second version's almost classical opening has grown on me the more I hear it.
The album closes with two remixes of Prosopagnosia that take the song further out there than the earlier version with added samples and assorted weirdness pushing the envelope until it engulfs you in the world of Sebastian Melmoth.
In Ruins is a good follow up to Insanity's Insanity building on the ideas and fleshing things out as they build their own cocoon to keep the worst aspects of the world at bay. Get this album and get into Sebastian Melmoth's closet with them and watch your fears and phobias float before you.
Sebastian Melmoth at Facebook
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