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Ruthless > They Rise > Reviews
Ruthless - They Rise

No surprises, for good and bad - 63%

Drequon, February 16th, 2015

I must admit that Ruthless never thrilled me, really. I understand there's a lot of people who truly enjoy their typical made-in-USA approach to power metal, and I don't think any of these fans should be in the least bit discouraged by my personal lack of enthusiasm about the band. What works well with someone may just have no effect on someone else, as you all know. Still, I always felt Ruthless were slightly overrated, and even at their best (the "Metal Without Mercy" EP, that is) they lacked the required ingenuity to achieve premier-league status. And I must say "They Rise", the purported comeback CD of the group, didn't surprise me for good or bad.

The album brings nine brand new tracks alongside five old tunes (quite unsurprisingly, the entire "Metal Without Mercy" EP) and still the standard of musicianship is quite consistent throughout - something of a highlight if you're a long-time fan, I guess. Still, I feel most songs are short on creativity and/or writing refinements: on most occasions, all you have is a good-but-predictable main riff played almost on loop with some very basic (and not very memorable) vocal lines singing straightforward lyrics about warriors, battles, satanic invasions and so on. It's all considerably intense and their devotion to metal music cannot be faulted, but the feeling of redundancy is just too intense for me to ignore it.

There's a few moments when the band creates something slightly out of the ordinary, such as in "Hang Man" (fast-paced and with a nice, unexpected chorus) and "Frustration" (straight-to-the-point semi-thrash, my personal favorite here), but I must say those are more of exceptions rather than the norm, unfortunately. And I truly fail to hear what's supposedly so awesome about tracks such as "Circle of Trust", "Defender", "Out of the Ashes" (the main riff is good enough, but the chorus is as metal-by-the-numbers as it gets), "Time Waits" and "Systematic Terror", as all sound too formulaic and considerably uninteresting to my ears.

I wouldn't say "They Rise" is a horrible album: actually, I'm sure there's a number of old-school metalheads who are very likely to have this CD in high regard. As I said earlier, we all have our personal filters and and if you happen to love "Discipline of Steel" I'm positive that you should give this new one a chance. But I suppose that only long-serving admirers will truly enjoy the ride, as there's very little to convince more casual listeners to part with their hard-earned cash.

- originally published at drequon.blogspot.com