WHAT DO WE THINK OF WITHIN THE RUINS?

Here’s a band we get a lot of emails about but haven’t covered much to date: Massachusetts technical melodic death metallers Within the Ruins. Since their new album The Invasion drops on August 31st and they’ve already released two new songs from it on their MySpace page, now’s as good a time as any to give these guys some e-ink.

My take: Within the Ruins are a solid band with decent musical and songwriting chops. They kinda remind me of what The Black Dahlia Murder might sound like if they were aligned more closely with the tech-death scene; they’re technical but not overly so (no “weedily weedily”), and there’s plenty of Swedish-style melody working it’s way into the fabric of every concise song. That said, I’m not sure what separates this band from other similar ones (maybe I just need to listen more) and they occasionally veer too close to deathcore via the employment of tri-tone breakdowns… in other words there’s a whole lot of Triple A riffs. But there are plenty of sweet riffs too.

So what do you guys think of this band? After all, I’m just some lowly blogger / pseudo-journalist and you’re the consumer. Take a listen here then come back and comment to let us know.

-VN