You may remember Alex Newport as the front-guy for Nottingham hardcore types Fudge Tunnel, who played Helmet/Unsane-style sludgy noisy shit way before many British bands cottoned onto the fact that it sounded ace. Since the break-up of that combo, he’s relocated to the States, and produced a bunch of excellent records by excellent bands (At The Drive-In, -16- to name the two I can remember). Here we join him again, in the midst of another power-trio.
Now, I never particularly rated Fudge Tunnel. They were way too derivative, and the songs didn’t always stand up to repeated listens in my humble opinion. Then again, I haven’t heard a couple of the albums, but anyway, this new band is a definite improvement, again in my humble opinion.
Superficially, it’s pretty much classic power-trio hardcore stuff, like Unsane I suppose. You know the drill – a rock-solid rhythm section, overlaid with crunchy, wiry guitar and strained vocals somewhere between singing and giving out – so far, so familiar.
However, Theory Of Ruin stands out particularly far from the crowd for a number of reasons. I haven’t heard ‘noise’ and ‘tune’ welded together so successfully for an absolute age. It’s almost painful to listen to, but you want to turn it UP instead of off. They also have a good handle on atmosphere. Opener “Asleep At The Wheel” is a case in point. It starts of quietly, with bass and drums – it’s very stop-start rhythmically, and when the guitar joins in, the song has a really strange, menacing, needling tension about it, like everything’s about to really go off. When the chorus finally crashes in, Newport’s massive amount of experience whilst hunched over the soundboard and the excellent musicianship means it packs a fucking ferocious wallop.
It’s not always great. Sometimes it gets a bit plodding, and Newport’s quiet vocals are marginally dodgy, but this is still a damn fine record, and yet another great release from Escape Artist Records.