Place of no Pity is the fourth full-length album from Ruins, the Australian black metal crew featuring drumming extraordinaire Dave Haley (Psycroptic) in their ranks.  Although this is my first extended experience with the band, by all accounts it appears to follow-through with a similar formula to previous releases.  The band play a steroid-fuelled black/death […]

And so Australia’s assault on excellent extremity continues with the third album from Tasmania’s black metal horde Ruins. My last contact with this act was the 2004 EP, Atom & Time, which to my recollection, was a traditional, frosty, clinical style of blistering black metal. I missed 2008’s Cauldron (even with its belated US release […]

Here’s the thing. You don’t just throw Ruins’ Cauldron in the player and casually listen while baking cookies in the kitchen, nor do you use it as background music for one of your mind-numbing knitting circles. It’s just not that kind of CD. Cauldrons must surround you, it must envelope you; you must ultimately allow […]