Obsidian

The follow-up to Irish band For Ruin’s excellent Shade demo was this EP, Obsidian. Released in a limited run of 130 professionally-printed CDs in a beautiful custom cardboard slipcase, the production and presentation of the release itself was a step up from the demos. Happily, this proved to be the case for the music as well. This time around four new tracks are offered, as well as a re-recording of the lengthy instrumental Treading.

Obsidian showcases the best sound and production job to date by For Ruin, still a solo project of Cork man John Murphy at this stage. It’s clear that he’s learned a thing or two from recording Shade and the previous split demo. The production is much the same as Shade—quite clear, and maybe just a little bassier than that demo was. The drums are mixed a little lower, too, which honestly I’m not so happy about, as the drums are so integral to the sound. There’s just a little grit in the tone, and the rather dull, flat sound of the full-length hasn’t been adopted yet. The sound is also stronger and beefier than Shade, and everything sounds much more precise and well-constructed. Really, it’s an excellent job for a self-produced release.

In terms of style and aesthetic, the band hasn’t gotten any easier to define. It still combines an extreme metal approach, frenetic drumming and a fine snarled vocal performance, with a very strong sense of melody. It’s not the melody of melodeath; it sounds more akin to the soaring leads of NWOBHM than anything—but it’s nearly all tremolo-picked. As always, a twin-guitar approach is used at all times. On this release, the extreme influence seems to have drifted towards death metal somewhat, with the black metal influence being all but removed.

As you might expect from For Ruin by this stage, the guitar is king. The riffs are as memorable and exquisitely-constructed as ever, producing an unrelenting highly-melodic but ultimately quite driving assault. There are no lazy riffs and no space-fillers; more or less every idea here is superb, high-energy, and exciting. With the exception of the slower instrumental piece Treading, there’s barely a moment on the EP, from opening guitar-driven instrumental December to the raunchy closer Jaded, where the urge to headbang isn’t being vigorously stimulated. There’s also some experimentation with guitar styles, most notably some rather frantic-sounding tapping, which shows up in short guitar solo sections in both Wake and Into Red. This has turned out to really suit the style of the music, and it’s almost a wonder that it hadn’t really been exploited until this release.

One huge improvement in this release is in the vocals. These have never been the strongest aspect of the band, but on Obsidian the performance is Murphy’s most confident to date. The main vocal is still a black-metal style snarl, but on this release it’s almost always multi-tracked with a lower, death-metal type growl. There is some experimentation with this lower-pitched vocal technique also, which has proven to be both interesting and effective. The result is a very strong performance, which fits the music remarkably well given its highly melodic nature. This is the For Ruin release where the vocals sit best with the instrumentation.

One area in which the performance has actually disimproved, albeit only slightly, is in the drum track. The quality of the performance is just as good, but it’s not as well-composed. On Shade the drums produced quite a few very memorable hooks, which benefited the sound and impact of the pieces quite remarkably. On Obsidian, they have been mixed lower, firstly, and secondly, they don’t seem to be doing nearly as much in the way of producing noteworthy patterns and fills. They do still provide the rapid, driving performance that pushes the sound of the performance without reverting to simplistic blasting, however. There is nothing actually wrong with the drumming. It’s just not as good as it has been.

One piece that stands out in particular to me is the re-recorded instrumental track, Treading (called Treading ’06 on the packaging). This is a long, slow burner of a piece, and totally different to the rest of the material. It opens as a slow, gentle, quite gloomy piece, carried mostly on clean, reverb-drenched electric guitars. Double-tracked violin is used to great effect to help build the atmosphere. It plays melody rather than simply harmonising or providing texture, and is intertwined with the guitars quite beautifully. The piece slowly builds to become a beautifully emphatic but at the same heartbreaking piece of music. A very restrained drum part enters several minutes in, and distorted guitars are used remarkably tastefully—metal bands seem to love introducing big clumsy walls of sound at the climaxes of pieces like this one, but For Ruin haven’t done anything quite so crass, preferring to use the distortion guitars for texture, with the melody being carried instead by tormented-sounding clean guitars and harmonising violin. This rule is broken only to allow the electric lead to interject with a fantastically bittersweet melodic theme. It’s a beautiful, very mature-sounding work. It’s also greatly improved from its incarnation on the split with Meiche. The production is a lot better, for one thing, which has been a great benefit. The actual arrangement has been changed significantly, too, transforming the piece into something much more subtle and remarkable than its original form.

This EP is really great. It’s far better than the rather disappointing full-length which followed, and improved on the previous demo Shade in a number of ways also. It’s paced similarly, save for that where the demo used short instrumental Rinn Bearna to provide relief from the intense block of tracks preceding it, Obsidian has used Treading to initially allow the listener to relax, but eventually to propel the music to new emotional peaks. Finally, there is no filler this time around, leading to a more concise performance. It’s simply outstanding, and while it may be difficult to track down, it’s highly recommended nonetheless.