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Interviews
John Murphy - For Ruin
12/01/10 || Euthanatos
After I reviewed For Ruin’s “Last Light” album, vocalist/guitarist John Murphy got in touch with Global Domination, and we promptly coerced him to do an interview. John was quite a nice fella, immediately sending the response to our questions, and had some great answers to them as well. Have a pint while reading this Irish man’s words of wisdom.
Global Domination: So, John, first things first. You’re Irish. How does that make you feel? All special and tingly?
John: It makes me feel the same as it always does – to be an underdog, proud, virile, broke, fortunate, hung-over and happy to be still doing what I’m doing :)… Seriously though – being Irish is great! Living here right now isn’t so great though and that’s no understatement. The country is fucked in many ways, but there are a lot of great things about the country too…you need to live abroad for a while to appreciate that and get some perspective though I think.
Global
Domination: I was pleasantly surprised by “Last Light”, not because I
had heard of the band before, but because of the “melodic black metal”
description attributed to you by some. What are your thoughts on that
label?
John:I’m a music fan as well as a musician and to my ears we’re a metal band at the extreme end of the spectrum. Call it what you like – its metal. Yes, people like to use tags and labels and I understand why some need to do that for journalistic reasons – comparisons to other bands are probably more useful for people because genre labels don’t do bands justice and are not descriptive enough. We are definitely melodic – not in a shitty “power metal” (to use a label!) way or anything, but melody is what someone remembers in a song, the bit of the song that you can’t get out of your head for days. I like to hear hooks and riffs that I can remember and the best songs for me are full of them. Our music has elements of this with guttural vocals and all the rest of it – we listen to more extreme and less extreme forms of music too and there’s also probably elements of these in our music. I don’t get worked up about what genre people call us, its all metal to me. Many writers have had trouble describing our sound with a label effectively and that’s a good thing as far as I’m concerned.
Global Domination: The guitar work is incredibly tight on this album. How do you guys go about writing riffs, what’s your overall song writing process like?
John: When the band began in 2002/2003 it was just me writing songs, demoing them on my desk and mucking about like that. The first 3 demos were done like that really, one recorded in Spain and the other two here in Ireland. The first album contained new material as well as some material from the demos – so it wasn’t until we started writing for the second album that the song-writing process changed a bit – Drew and Pete (guitar and bass) contributed ideas on Last Light and I had some songs demo’s myself so we put it all together and formed the songs together in rehearsals. I’m the only lyric writer for now – hopefully that’ll change some day. But for now I’m happy that the guys are writing as well and that creatively we are all involved. We have 1 new song ready at the moment and two more pretty much written so its getting easier!
Global Domination: You share vocal/guitar duties. I claimed in my review your vocals are cool, but they lack originality. (a) do you want to punch me for that? (b) could you not punch me because I said your guitar playing is good?
John: Well the originality point is something I agree with and its something that you could level at most extreme/guttural metal vocalists. Its something that tends to get a bit overlooked maybe. Certainly I focus more on the guitar than on the vocals. So a little from column (a) and a little from column (b) then eh?!
Global Domination: “December” was your debut, right? How does it compare to “Last Light”? I mean, I haven’t listened to it yet, so how about you convince me to do so?
John: Is that a request for a sales pitch? Yes, December was the debut for Sentinel records in late 2007. It did ok and has some of our most popular live songs on it, many of them were on the demos as I mentioned. But its production reflects its budget and our lack of experience I guess – it’s a bit thin sounding, particularly for the style we play which needs a better production. It’s a good reflection of where we were then, like any album really – an audio representation of a band. It was not the finished article in terms of band members either and was recorded around the birth of my son which took up a lot of my time understandably. Get hold of it – its worth a listen for sure. We remixed a song called “Towards an End” from that album for the digital EP “Enlightened” that we released just before Last Light came out – its streaming on the MySpace page now at (www.myspace.com/forruinband) and that’s how it should have sounded. Maybe we’ll record some of those songs again sometime, but not anytime soon – we’re looking onwards and upwards, not backwards.
Global Domination: It’s an age-old cliché, but what are some of your influences? How do you particularly feel about Dissection?
John: Indeed it is but our influences come from
lots of sources, life, maturing, family, surroundings, nature etc.
Musical influences play only a part in that. It’s well documented by now
that some of my personal influences include Dissection, Unanimated,
Rotting Christ, Hypocrisy, Paradise Lost, Katatonia, Amorphis, Death…at
one time or another people have said that they can hear elements of
those bands in our sound all passed through the blender that is our
brains. In recent weeks for example I’ve listen to all of the above,
along with Septicflesh, Type O, Lizzy, Dire Straits, Alice in Chains,
Mastodon, Rory Gallagher…
How do I feel about Dissection… well they are a band I always admired
musically – Jon’s beliefs and lyrics are something I cannot relate to
really, he was out there in that respect I think. But he was a very
talented musician – I saw them live a few times and am glad I got to see
them. Asklund was a great addition to the lineup (I like Dawn a lot
too…) but seeing Jon play leads while doing his vocals at the same time
was quite a sight. I would consider Storm and Somberlain to be their
best releases and Reinkaos grew on me after a while – I disliked it when
it came out, reminding me too much of The Jester Race – but it’s a
great album too. His suicide robbed us of a great musical talent.
Global Domination: How about the lyrics? I’m assuming you write them. What inspires you? What do you like to sing about?
John: I’m the only lyric-writer in the band at the moment (hopefully that will change some day) and our lyrics at the moment come from my influences, experiences and opinions for the most part. I don’t write horror/gore/satanic lyrics or any bullshit like that – there’s enough horror in the world around us without delving into fantasy. The lyrics on Last Light deal with a range of topics from getting older, loss of freedom, climate and “In Suffering” is a commentary on the fallacy of organized religion and the disdain I have for the catholic church in Ireland. The album’s artwork is also influenced by this repulsive subject. As for inspiration – inspiration isn’t something tangible or easy to identify but for me personally, I guess its my surroundings, my life and family, hobbies and what music and other media I listen to or read. I spent quite a long time in education and so my professional life also influences me (and in turn our music) to an extent. The drive for the band comes from the love of playing a style of music that we all enjoy and seeing others enjoy our music is also a factor – ultimately if nobody liked our music we would probably still play it for ourselves and our own enjoyment – the fact that others like it is a great bonus and its encouraging. It used to be me on my own pushing the band forward but now we are all in it and there are 4 of us fully behind the band.
Global Domination: Speaking of Ireland, a number of bands have come out of there. What have you to say on the Irish scene? Is Ireland a good place to be for a metal band starting out?
John: I wouldn’t say that Ireland is a great place to be growing a band – it’s ok, and has its benefits and drawbacks. There’s probably too many crappy bands and a lack of decent venues. There are a lot of metal fans (casual and otherwise) in Ireland – Metallica plays here every year lately it seems and others in the big-leagues do well too. The underground, or lets say “proper” metal shows are much smaller, with a fan-base of less than 1000 people or so I’d say. Festivals here have struggled in the recession (which hit Ireland harder than many other countries), numbers are down at gigs, CD shops are closing, business is down and bands are not immune to this. It’s not a great time to be putting out albums in Ireland or anywhere really. But there is a core of fans in Ireland that are pretty decent and loyal – it’s just that everyone has extra costs and lower incomes at the moment.
We fool ourselves here into thinking we can put on 2-day festivals when we can’t, especially at the moment. There are some decent bands in Ireland from various styles within the extreme metal spectrum and some are fairly well known now abroad. Irish bands seem a little strange to the outside world – metal from an island on the north west of Europe is an oddity to many international fans who know Ireland from a whole range of clichés and from a musical perspective – U2 and many other highly successful radio-friendly artists. We have too many gigs over here at the moment, probably too many crap bands and the local gig-goer is tired of seeing them play week after week so they are selective, and rightly so. Cork has really suffered from this, and Dublin too (although there is a larger pool of people in Dublin). But there are the notable bands from Ireland that have made a mark in the metal scene – many of those draw on their Celtic roots and Ireland’s history. While such history interests us, it has not been a source of influence for this band – we sound nothing like the “Celtic” bands I guess.
Global Domination: Have you ever spat or taken a piss on Phil Lynnot’s statue? Just wonderin’.
John: No. Why would I do such a fucking stupid thing to a monument of a legend?
Global Domination: Can you speak that weird language thing you people have in Ireland?
John: Oddly enough, yes, I can. Myself and a few friends speak it but we are very much in a tiny minority. We do not use it in our daily lives, only abroad when we spot talent on the train and describe what we’d like to do to her. Basically – rarely. It’s a pity, I love it.
Global Domination: Right, back to music. Have you ever hugged any of the guys in Primordial?
John: Possibly. I don’t recall! We’ve played with them a good few times so maybe so!
Global Domination: What are your intentions, touring-wise? Any festivals we should look forward to seeing For Ruin?
John: Right now we are working on booking a short UK tour for the Spring and are looking at a few festival possibilities so fingers crossed for those. Its early days for us and we cannot expect to have every opportunity fall into place for us – we are realistic. Touring costs a lot of money and we are not rich guys… hopefully some Scandinavian and European dates will fall into place later this year though for us.
Global Domination: Why “For Ruin”, by the way?
John: Its just a name, nothing more. Every band needs a name unfortunately ha… we were initially called “ruin” but that seemed a little obvious and these days it seems like Ruin is what we’re all heading for!
Global Domination: Sometimes, Irish bands, having such a rich folk (music) background, like to insert some traditional instruments in their songs. Would you consider doing this?
John: Yes, quite a few of the well known Irish metal bands have done this over the years. Our style is nowhere near those bands so it’s unlikely I guess really. On the 2nd and 3rd demos I used some acoustic guitar and lots of violins/cellos on a couple of tracks, but those songs never made it past the demos and we don’t intend to revive them so I doubt that we’ll go down this route. We do not fit into the Celtic/Pagan style where such instruments might be more common – lets see what the future brings – I like a lot of traditional Irish music and if it seems right we might do it, but its not on the cards now.
Global Domination: Name the top 5 metal albums and top 5 non-metal albums in your opinion.
John: I couldn’t name my 5 favourite albums (metal or otherwise) without spending a lot of time on it – but here’s a few albums (metal or otherwise) that I have listened to lately or in the last while that I really enjoy:
Septicflesh – Communion
Alice in Chains – Black Gives Way to Blue
Mastodon – Crack the Skye
Enslaved – Vertebrae
Gorefest – Rise to Ruin
Hypocrisy – Taste of Extreme Divinity
Rammstein – Liebe is fur alle Da
Paradise Lost – Faith Divides Us
Unanimated – In the Light of Darkness
Faith No More – Angel Dust
And some non-metal ones:
Rory Gallagher – Rory Gallagher
Dire Straits – Brothers in Arms
Foo Fighters – greatest hits
Kill Bill soundtrack
The Police – Synchronicity
Sisters of Mercy – Slight Case of Overbombing
