For Ruin | ‘Last Light’ MI EXCLUSIVE

Co. Cork’s melodic dark metal sensation For Ruin have unleashed their highly anticpated new album, ‘Last Light’, here at Metalireland. We’re proud to be the first port of call for what is by any estimation a smashing piece of work.

Like their last (and MI 5/5 rated) album ‘December’, it shows everything that is still great about the underground. Dedication - great songwriting - ferocity - and variety. Fusing the diverse sounds of Death, Rotting Christ, Paradise Lost and many more, ‘Last Light’ shows a band at their creative best. MI caught up with Drew and John from the band for this brief overview - but before you read it, get it.

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One of the biggest things last time was the production. How have you addressed that this time round - and can you put people’s concerns to rest?

Drew Myers - I personally would say that the production on the last one was not up to scratch, and I think most people would agree. There was a lot going on at the time that tended to hamper the overall production on ‘December’ which has strong songs with unfortunately rushed production.

But, with ‘Last Light’ we had Alwyn Walker from Komodo doing it, and in my opinion, he did an unreal job on it. ‘Last Light’ is extremely clear yet still heavy without any loss of the melody, and to me sounds organic, which I think is great.

John Murphy – Yeah I’ve flagged this many times now and still feel the same; it’s a good album with a rushed low-budget production, the style of which may well suit other bands but not our style of playing and writing.

That was one of the drivers for getting an outside set of ears and skills involved this time around. Every band is on a learning curve all the time and a debut album is what it is, just that, and it’s a good representation, warts an’ all, of the band at that particular time. From the remix of Towards an End we know that there’s a good sound in there and some time we’ll remix the album – but not for now. Its time to look forwards - not back.

There’s a real upping in speed on this album, and it feels a lot more ‘committed’. What’s your take on that?

DM- I think that a lot of the speed is due to the fact that we function as a band now and less as one person, which brings a lot of influence from the band as a whole. We all have different influences from what we each listen to; Steve & I in particular would always be into the faster and heavier kinds of bands.

When it comes to playing the songs in rehearsal, the arrangement tends to get changed amongst the band as we play the songs. The song ‘Cold Call’ for example was very different when we started playing it almost 2 years ago; it was much slower and is a prime example of how we influence each other now as a solid unit. We all bring our opinions on new material with us and I believe the songs end up stronger with all of us working on them together.

JM- I started writing for this album in August 2007, right after the birth of my son and after December had been recorded. It had been a pretty stressful time what with the recording and all the personal stuff happening so maybe that influenced the writing. Solace was the first song specifically written for Last Light and its one of the faster tunes on there with a sort of eastern touch to it that we hadn’t used before.

‘Enlightened’ and ‘Cold Call’ were actually written around the time of December, but we held them back; we actually tracked drums for them as I recall for the first album, so they’re the oldest songs of this bunch – but we sped them up in rehearsals when Steve came back and it just felt right. As for feeling more committed – I guess that comes from the solidity that we had during the writing.

We were all focused on writing new material for the “difficult second album” ha ha… the 1st album’s easy ‘cos you have all the material in many respects and have gigged the shit out them, but I wouldn’t say writing for Last Light was difficult – to the contrary really given that Drew and Pete really started to contribute which is the scenario I’d wanted since day one.

Why the decision to go digital- and can we be certain we’ll all be able to get full hard copies?

DM- This decision came about after much debate – we’d spoken about it before, but we hadn’t actually sat down and thought it through until about 6 months ago. The fact of the matter is that bands in this kind of genre are rarely going to get any seriously huge response in only selling hard copy CDs, why not let everyone have the album for free and increase exposure? It just makes sense these days.

Most people just download what they want these and that’s that. This way anyone who wants the album can have it, anywhere in the world, anytime they want. This is a good thing in a lot of ways, there’s no harm in generating a fan base by giving, what I believe, a great album away for free. We will have hard copies as well.

JM- Music is like a flyer these days. We are not going exclusively digital; hard copies of the album are available on CD (probably from early October on forruin.com). The idea here is simple – give away the album digitally as a flyer so as many people as are interested can get the album and check it out.

If they like it, they can do what they like – listen to that version, buy a digital version of full quality, or buy a hard copy on CD and maybe later on vinyl (not for now though). At our stage of development the goal is simple – get as many people as possible to hear your music through as many channels as possible. If labels want to survive they’ll have to adapt and change their revenue streams (largely to merchandising I guess).

We’re stepping up our promo campaign on this release a lot - the new websites are running, they look great and people can get the new and old music/merch there and be satisfied that they are supporting the band directly and nobody else. We would never claim to be the first to go this route – its happening everywhere in the “overground”.

How have your own tastes and influences developed since ‘December’, and how have those worked into the new album?

DM- Tastes haven’t changed that much I’d say, I listen to mostly the same stuff that I always have, and I’d say the others are the same - though I do think that we’ve all been listening to a bit more black metal these days, though it’s maybe not really that apparent in the songs.

The overall vibe musically of the band has changed, but I wouldn’t put that down to anything more than us working very closely together on what we do. We’re all very driven by this and I think that it just comes down to arrangement at the end of the day - I think we all know if something works or if it doesn’t.

JM- I wouldn’t say our tastes or influences have changed that much since then (it’s only a couple of years after all) but what has changed I think is the focus, determination and drive behind the band – its no longer being driven by me alone, its everyone pulling their weight.

I’ve tried to keep up with the new releases from the old bands I like, but being so busy with Last Light for the early part of this year I haven’t had a lot of time to devote to listening to music for pleasure, except in the car… but with a few exceptions its mostly the old guard that I still listen to.

What do you think is the absolute pinnacle of this work, and hence what you’ve done to date?

DM- That’s hard to say, ‘Care of the Dead’ and ‘In Suffering’ would probably be the top two for me, but it’s all subjective to what the listener feels. These two songs in general more or less define the album, but there are loads more that I think change the way a person might think about what we do. ‘Decline’ and ‘Deluge’ are very different to the above, but kind of exemplify the diversity in our songs.

JM- I’m not tired of these songs yet which is a rarity after almost any recording process – but mixing the album remotely certainly helped take away that weariness I’m sure so I like everything on Last Light. I think the final track on the album “Elysium” is a guilty pleasure for me – it’s a totally different, slower feel, to the rest of the album and closes the CD perfectly, but it won’t be a live tune (like “Frailty” from the debut which was only played live once or twice).

Elysium’s a high point for me as well as the songs that Drew mentions above. Personally I love the instrumental “Crawl” – it’s our fastest song to date and has a really nice mid section that is great to play. People will have had a chance to hear and get to know the album by the time we play a few launch gigs in October and November and will have decided on their own favorites. Like all albums of their time, it’s a good representative musical-photograph of where For Ruin stands in 2009 / 2010 and I’m nothing but proud of it.

Tell us a bit about the album’s lyrical agenda this time round - I gather there’s a nod to the Ryan report?

JM- The lyrics on Last Light cover a number of topics from song to song - life’s circumstances to some environmental issues to death and regrets are covered among the topics. Religion is not a major topic on the album but my dislike for many facets of any type of religion predates any recent publications or commentary on the matter. Ryan finally documented much of the evidence that the dogs on the street have known about for years about the perversions within elements of the church in Ireland.

It sickens me to the pit of my stomach as an Irish person (and a father) that such events happened here. In Suffering addresses this and the lyrics in turn inspired Paul McCarroll’s album and EP artwork. Ryan may only be recognizable to those in Ireland but I’m sure its sentiments and difficult subject matter have resonance globally. I don’t see the need to write about fiction or fantasy when there is enough genuine horror in every day life to fill a hell of a lot of death metal albums!

What do you want people to take from it?

DM- We hope that people enjoy the album, at the end of the day, it’s all about the music!

JM- Definitely – we enjoyed writing and pulling all of the parts of this release together – its hard work, but we are now in total control of our own future and that’s a nice position to be in. Personally I hope people will enjoy the music, the artwork and the shows and that the quality shines through. We’re already writing for the next album… we have shows in Ireland lined up with our new drummer Pete Alcorn and are working with Lugga to prepare UK and European dates for next year and we’re also looking at some Scandinavian dates for the early part of 2010 so hopefully that will happen.

It’s an incredible album. Get it now ::: 23/09/09