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BANDS: Punk
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The
Ruiners: How's That Grab Ya?
The Ruiners music is made up of elements of punk, garage rock, bubblegum, surf, and hair metal. This is a fine concept, an amalgamation of divergent branches of rock in an attempt to return each to its formerly rebellious roots; but it suffers in the execution, because the Ruiners only take the surface elements of each genre, ignoring whatever actual ideas might exist below. You could argue that the aforementioned genres are all mostly surface anyways, but while not necessarily intellectually challenging, good rock music always has an element of adolescent yearning, whether its for independence, love, lust, whatever. But what to do with the Ruiners? Theyve got the chops, but the attitude is oh-so-fake. So you get a shellac-glossy package of fashion tips and Danelectro-brand reissue reverb, devoid of emotion and intelligence. The lyrics are schlock-rock nonsense about vampires and surfing, but then smack dab in the middle, you get a song about the singers parents divorce. What the fuck? When did feelings of separation anxiety and loneliness enter into the list of acceptable topics for rawk music? But its indicative of an overall problem with the album: despite the fact that the album art is covered in blood, sweat, and other less savory bodily fluids, the Ruiners are squeaky clean. Oh, they strain to be offensive and outrageous, but the distorted guitars are mixed low, the tempo rarely rises above a meander, and that singer! Hes got the I-dont-care-about-anything attitude down, but doesnt realize that youre not REALLY supposed to not care about anything; youre just supposed to PRETEND like you dont care about anything. Though I suppose its difficult to have any emotional investment in songs about vampires and ghosts. You might as well be Shirley Temple singing about lollipops. Temptation is the only track that comes close to menacing. Its a piano-based pastiche of Nick Cave and Tom Waits, but again, the thin vocals distract. The Ruiners commit the criminal rock and roll sin of being boring. The production is boring, the lyrics are boring, the songs are boring, even the shocking artwork is boring, boring, boring. Boring. They try and make something new out of the old, but that doesnt work when you use the elements of the old that have been trotted out so many times that theyve lost whatever meaning they ever had. Boring.
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