Album Review: Rites To Ruin - Daughter of Hatred
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
I worry about my daughters. For them, really. There never have and never again will be two more pristine little girls ever to walk the earth, but they grow up in times with unkind intentions. I don’t know what the world will look like in years to come, but some things like the encroachment of social media into our lives have been ongoing for long enough for us to be able to draw conclusions. And it seldom looks good. Beyond the perverse irony of being connected to everything while simultaneously becoming more and more isolated, the amount of poisonous horseshit it pumps into your mind can’t be weighed exactly, but it does still show in the numbers. Spiralling eating disorders, among a host of other denaturing mental health maladies. Loneliness. Increasing suicide and self harm rates. Anorexia, bulimia, a hundred others. And that’s just the tip of it - did you ever read “Men Who Hate Women” by Laura Bates? It’s a deeply unsavoury look at an amorphous blob of different but interrelated groups of men united by varying degrees of distaste for women, ranging from the scathing, jealous contempt of incels, the joyless, dehumanising manipulations of pick-up “artists” to the superficially more palatable MGTOW types that are, in the end, rooted in the same bilious sludge as all the rest. It will never make anything better, nurturing this hard, lightless kernel at the core of your soul. The best it can do is make you feel righteous in your hatred. At that point, the trap is sprung. It’s so much harder to get better when getting better has already started to feel too much like admitting you were wrong.
I think the world seems so free at hand with avenues through which to abuse or be abused that it’s important – vitally so – to take affirmation and goodness wherever you can find it. That’s not exactly unexplored territory so far as wisdom goes – “whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things” was written in the Bible long, long years ago, and remains worthy advice now irrespective of your religious persuasion. Perhaps you’ve no taste for scripture however. That’s fine. There are more contemporary sources of validation open to you. And thus, by a long and circuitous route, do we come at last to the subject for which we are gathered: Rites to Ruin, and their new album “Daughter of Hatred”. I know. It sounds edifying already.
Lets neatly sidestep any initial scepticism by beginning with one thing upon which we either agree, or you’re just wrong. Rites to Ruin demonstrate an irrefutable mastery of the noble art of penning a chorus. Some of what they’ve burned to disk here are titanic, globe-spanning anthems of magisterial bearing. I wasn’t doing anything altogether glamorous when I first heard “Reflections” – to be honest I was driving a shitload of bin bags to the dump, swallowed in the cloying miasma of second hand nappies and mouldy food – but it was a genuine struggle not to pull over and start screaming lyrics I didn’t even know back at the speakers. Some of these songs take flight, splitting the hovering azure like Apollo’s arrow. These are muscles the band flex throughout the album, but they're unquestionably at their best once they allow their wings to unfurl; while I wouldn’t suggest that the more truncated tracks of the release are substandard in their own right (because they aren’t) but it’s the lengthier works that gleam most resplendently here. “Sorrow” is just… gorgeous, this melancholic, winding composition at once heartrending while simultaneously taking wing with these sensational melodies that wash like a wave of light over you. I knew this album was really cooking with gas when “Fire” first played; the osseous crunch of bass-forward production values bulldoze inexorably forward with powerful, reinforced contemporary metal riffs the likes of which the almighty Judas Priest have made such sterling use of late. It flows into a chorus wrought from sheer metallic justice, exploding out like the birth of a star.
“Fire” is around the midpoint of the album; early tracks have their charms, but it’s the latter half of the release that does most of the heavy lifting. As “Envy” closes out with the most impressive solo work on the album, two and a half minutes of exultant hope evocation summoned forth via sagacious six string application, it’s these latter songs – “Fire”, “Reflections”, “Rise”, “Sorrow” and “Envy” that stick in my mind as having landed so very beautifully. But more than just the obvious power of the riffs and melodies and individual performances behind them and so on... it’s the subject matter of the songs that makes it feel so vital to me.
“Watch us as we soar,
Not Hiding any more,
Unfurl your wings and take to the sky”
There’s so many moments where these wonderful, heartfelt sentiments come through in the lyrics, held aloft on a euphoric wingspan of resplendent classic metal with a gleaming modern sheen. It’s this, things like this, words like this, that I want so desperately for my children to grow up knowing in their hearts. Things that everyone on the planet should know, this indelible value that we all have, that so many of us tragically cannot see either in themselves or anyone else.
It's not perfect. The spoken word vocals on the title track and “Prevail” don’t sit particularly well with me personally, maybe as much because of the content as the delivery. Having things like “be beautiful in sin” whispered monotone in my ear feels a bit like listening to self-help book for Vulcan BDSM enthusiasts. I felt like I was being seduced by an answering machine. “Free” is a coin flip depending on what mood I’m in. On the one hand, Creed want their… everything back. I can’t deny that it’s almost offensively catchy, in an “oh my god this is my generation’s dad rock” way. Is it maybe this that renders me cold to the song, the way it confronts me with my own age, the ever-closer tread of the reaper sneaking behind me? Maybe, but it would also be true to say that it’s stylistically different enough from the rest of the album to mean that it’s somewhat incongruent overall. It would likely be fine surrounded by brethren alike to itself. I don’t know, I’m having a hard time putting a precise finger on it, maybe it’s alt-rock stereotypes just aren’t ones with which I can appreciate particularly well. I typically find music of it’s type pleasant enough, but disposable – the apex of background music, inoffensive, not complex enough to be much diminished by a complete failure to concentrate on it, but catchy enough to prompt humming along with it while I rake handfuls of biscuits that my kids are storing for winter out from under the couch.
I downloaded that Casey report that came out recently. You know, the one that writes of the blind eye authorities turned to years upon years of the trafficking and rape of children. Its findings sit in a long, long list of other facts and figures I know of that feel bad for the soul. Did you know the highest number of child amputees (per capita) in the world is in Gaza? I think we all know why. I’m aware that bringing this up in a review of metal album probably seems crass and insensitive so let’s get to the point. When it’s so easy to slip into a paralysing malaise about the times we live in, anything that uplifts, that affirms, that empowers, that stands for the goodness and worth of you as a person, is invaluable. Metal often gets stereotyped as a genre with nothing beyond death and debauchery to talk of – not that I can complain too vociferously, it’s not like my beloved strains of cacophonous goregrind provide an especially convincing refutation. Nonetheless, this misses the emotional breadth metal can offer. If you believe that it can only offer negativity, then you miss its ability to overjoy. To inspire. To strengthen. There are a few songs I turn to when I feel weak. “We Will be Strong” by Thin Lizzy, “Fighting On” by Sepultura, “Battle Hymn” by ManOwaR (legally, you have to spell it like that), and more besides. There are cuts on “Daughter of Hatred” that I know could make the grade. The delivery of the sentiment is obviously important – it’s message would be rather less impactful if the soundtrack to it was just the vocalist doing that hand-in-the-armpit fart technique over and over – but even so, it’s that message that’s really selling this release to me. So as I drag my insufferably loquacious self to what passes for a conclusion, please allow me to leave you with a last assurance that’s true even if you do not believe it:
The world is a better place simply because you keep breathing.
Photo credit: Summonfire Photography
