On the Ripple Desk: Featuring Bridesmaid and Ruin

Bridesmaid - International House of Mancakes

Coming on like your creepy uncle's porn collection somehow got mixed up with your Black Sabbath albums a bottle of lube and a suitcase of rather scary looking sex toys . . . . and surprise, surprise, they enjoyed it!  Full on sleazeoid, stoner doom, with throbbing members, and pulsating beats -- ok, enough porn jokes.  Take it for what it is, some seriously heavy, instrumental doom, comprised of two bassists and two drummers, a mouthful of puns and a sense of humor wicked enough to have them dressed up like the Village People on a cover homage to Destroyer. 

Not serious dudes, but some very serious riffage.  Put it on and lose yourself.





Ruin - Fiat Lux

 A hardcore, Buddhist punk rock band might seem like just to many contradictions to stand on it's own, but somehow Ruin manage to pull it off.  From their bio info, I learned that Ruin was more than music, it was a propaganda project . Students of the arts, philosophy and religion, doing lab work with music. Experimenting with a way to be activists for social and individual evolution.  Founded in 1980 by Dr. Glenn Wallis, (then a religious studies’ undergrad), Ruin was ostensibly a model “old school” hardcore “punk” rock musical group. This model was characterized by hyper speed rhythms, banshee lead guitar, raging vocals and ideological lyrics. Ruin achieved headliner status locally in Philadelphia’s mid sized music halls. Live, they experimented with noise, genre bending, pamphleteering, theatrics, and audience participation.

Now what we have left are two albums of pretty tasty punk.  On this album from 1986, Fiat Lux sounds a bit more "rock" with a punk snot, like an early Replacements or Soul Asylum.  But I found this for $1, so for that, it's definitely worth a pick up.

--Racer



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