### Ruins: Place of no pity

#### 18/01/13 || Averatu

Ruins are black metal devils from Tasmania. Apparently they get the Aurora Borealis down there as well, but not nearly as much snow as their norther counterparts. Initially I thought the drums where just way too good to be tr00 from a fairly unknown band, but once I did my homework I found out the drummer is some guy called Dave Haley, who plays for some other band no one ever heard of called Psycroptic. Then I also find out that they’re a duo, with most of the instruments, writing and production executed by some other guy I’ve never heard of, which brings us pretty close to the dreaded ‘one man black-metal’ zone, but thankfully Ruins avoid all the stereotypical traps of that genre. The vocals remind me of Emperor, not a bonus but it suits the style of music. Some tracks have a Killing Joke feel which scores them big brownie points in my books. A well produced and executed black-metal’ish album.

7,5/10: I’m wondering how a duo would tour.