Ruined Families – Blank Language

March 11, 2013 • Adagio 830

More and more interesting punk bands have been making their way towards my inbox lately; the latest is Greek experimental hardcore group Ruined Families. While Blank Language's sound should be right up my alley, I'm not totally thrilled with them just yet, although this album is still an enjoyable experience.

Ruined Families has a pretty unique and interesting sound—while it's rooted somewhere in hardcore punk, there are quite a few many other things going on as well. It's incredibly noisy, dense, and sometimes atmospheric, with elements of crust and maybe even black metal with lots of dissonant guitar lines and intense blasting sections. The more standard melodic-punk riffs are very good and meld well with the more abrasive and noisy side of the band, resulting in an interesting contrast between the two conflicting aesthetics.

It's also an album that is a bit difficult to really get into, because of its sound. The songwriting is a bit complex (one might call it "progressive", even) and the songs tend to wander around a bit from riff to riff, making the album come off as a steady stream of hardcore aggression without much structure to it. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't; I'm not sure if it does here. It's not bad, but I never like when an album is hard to follow.

Blank Language is a good album—not a fantastic one, but definitely a good one, though it's somewhat niche. But I can tell that Ruined Families would doubtlessly be awesome to see play live, and I'll probably keep an eye out in case they ever make it out this way. In the meantime, if it sounds interesting, Blank Language is an album worth checking out.