Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Artist: My Ruin
Label: Tiefdruck Musik
Release: 2010
Length: 44:54
Rating: 4.8/5
She started her career in the sexist, racist world of rap music, and with the album The Power Of A Woman she stood up to the mostly Black scene of her musical rivals. She carried on that endurance-and-survival test in rap metal waters with Manhole (later renamed Tura Satana), and for some time now she’s been active in My Ruin, one of the wrongly overlooked, outstanding offshoots of the rock world. How do you pin down My Ruin without shortchanging everything they have to offer? They sound like Marilyn Manson on a full-blown sludge rocker trip, while thematically they cover the turf of debauchery, rebellion, sexism, misanthropy and pure-blooded opposition to institutionalized belief.
In its consistent turning of crosses upside down by 180°, the dynamic duo of controversial vocalist Tairrie B. Murphy and her husband, multi-instrumentalist Mick Murphy, conjures up some seriously high-quality revolutionary rock on their sixth record, with a brutally filthy whiff of heresy and magical eternity. Tairrie can be vulgar, sexy and aggressive all at once, blessed with a pair of balls that put plenty of posers on the music scene to shame (and there’s no shortage of those ballless wonders). Two decades of making music, rapping and stirring up trouble with Manhole and Tura Satana, and now a (for the time being) final settling in My Ruin, doesn’t mean the passion has cooled off. Musically the record is packed with punchlines and, above all, good music and talent, while the punky mischief of the arrangements cohesively complements lyrics that are at times very prosaic, but at least honest. Picture a perfect missile of Texan, damn it, authentic southern rock in the vein of Corrosion Of Conformity, add a pinch of Motörhead, Black Sabbath, stoner, and bass and drums with a metal edge, a bit of thrash, doom and punk, and you get only a rough approximation of this devastating cocktail. My Ruin serve up a perfect Molotov straight into your ears and through your nerve endings to the very last corner of your being. My Ruin hit full and hard. The lyrics are emotional, nearly exorcistic and brimming with a determination that doesn’t murder or kill the urge to listen. The opening stretch is very doomy, slowed down and atmospheric, but the tempo soon picks up and shifts into a higher gear, with a signature guitar duel of fresh, lively riffs and screaming, full-bodied female vocals. There’s practically no filler, and the excellence, as said, is enough to export. My Ruin are the hellish version of full-blooded fun and hyperactivity. Ghosts And Good Stories is a textbook case of rock’n’roll disobedience and deliberate aural abuse, and the peek into the intimate side plants such a refined blend of power and pure rhythm in your brain and cerebral waters that after listening you’ll realize you simply need more! And one more thing: Ghosts And Good Stories is, genre notwithstanding, a concept record that, in the singer’s words, is very reflective and apocalyptic on many levels, capturing intimate impressions of Los Angeles in all its multilayered provocativeness. Full and empty, hard and hollow in its pomposity, and in this world of failed values religion is just a banal Band-Aid on aching souls. The aesthetic is mysteriously metaphorical and highly provocative. The substance is juicy, and the form convincing and polished.
If you didn’t feel any of the above, you’re dead, deaf or in a coma. With their magnetism and quality, My Ruin have, at least in my case, won over a new pair of ears that needs more of this kind of punishment! For this effort the Murphy couple deserve a standing ovation and encouragement to do it again soon!
Line-up
Tarrie B. Murphy – vocals
Micky Murphy – bass, guitar, drums
Production
Mick Murphy & Josh Lynch
Track list
1. Diggin’ For Ghosts
2. Long Dark Night
3. Excommunicated
4. Eyes Black
5. Money Shot
6. Abusing The Muse
7. La Cuidad
8. Suicide Tuesday
9. Saviourself
10. Malediction
11. Repose
12. Turned Out
13. Death Knell
