[This review was originally published in Badaboom Gramaphone #3 and appears here with permission.]
Though they only released two longplayers in their relatively brief time together, Ruin remains, in the minds of many, Philadelphia’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll band. Formed in 1982 while attending the city’s Temple University, Ruin was a rare bird in the hardcore ghetto to which it was wrongly pigeonholed. Taking in a myriad of influences — ranging from punk/hardcore to free jazz and the moody musings of Leonard Cohen — Ruin spat out a noise so intensely passionate that many who heard the records or saw the band live (dressed all in white, kneeling between songs on a candle-festooned stage) were left scratching their heads.
He-Ho is a fine statement of purpose. The guitar interplay of brothers Glenn and Damon Wallis is a real treat, especially on the stop-and-go thrasher “Dionysian.” The rhythm section of bassist Cordy Swope and drummer Rich Hutchins does a fine job of propelling the songs upwards and outwards. While it essentially stays true to a punk/thrash blueprint, the album delivers plenty of curveballs: a march (the title track), psychedelia (“Freedom Has No Bounds”), surf (the surprising end tag of “Baby Doll”), an acoustic/electric reading of Cohen’s “Master Song” and one of the ’80s’ greatest punk-pop singalongs, “Proof.” Singer Vosco (Thomas) Adams’ lyrics are even more consequential than the music. While most of his contemporaries were railing at the government (Biafra), lamenting lost loves (Aukerman) or singing about hardcore itself (Seconds), Vosco is more concerned, alternately, with impending Armageddon — in “Where Fortune,” he sings, “There is but one / One action of consequence / remaking man and the earth / O sorrow / Upon the Earth / Then suddenly the bombs fall / Blue eyes turn black / The final dream / The nightmare’s become the here and now”) — and the war within himself (from the album-opening “Alter”: “I AM ALIVE / I want to be free of self-imposed inauthenticity!”). One of the great debut albums.
With Fiat Lux, Ruin issued a challenge not only to its punk/hardcore peers, but also to the aboveground hard-rock bands then ruling the airwaves. While never even verging on the cheese metal peddled by the likes of Poison, Bon Jovi (Fiat Lux was recorded in the same studio as BJ’s hugely successful Slippery When Wet) and the rest of the Ratt pack, this is a rock album. The thrash leanings of He-Ho are largely absent on Fiat Lux, replaced by the rock/punk grooves laid down by Swope and new drummer Paul Della Pelle (Hutchins left to play with Live Skull and Of Cabbages and Kings). Della Pelle seems largely responsible for the major league sound and feel of this record; one is reminded of the addition of Topper Headon to the Clash. While there are fewer surprises here than on the debut, the band’s songwriting seems more focused. Ideas are taken to their logical conclusions instead of veering off into weirdness-for-weirdness-sake territory. Standout tracks are the soaring pop gem “Hero,” the trippy “Taster,” the singalong rocker “China” and the Crampish “Real Good Time.” (There’s a second Cohen cover: “Famous Blue Overcoat.”) Lyrically, Vosco seems to have fully embraced the Buddhist teachings he and the band were delving into. The Atomic clock fears of He-Ho are replaced by the more spiritual explorations of “Life After Life” and “Ruin” (“We are the spirit of the Earth / We are the moss among the ruins / Submerged beneath a stealthy dream / We are the spirit of the Earth”). Firing on all cylinders, Ruin seemed prime for … dissolution?
Though inactive (were they broken up or merely on hiatus?) for the better part of ten years, interest in the band never flagged. With vinyl copies of the group’s albums becoming more and more scarce, Black Hole Records saved the day with Songs of Reverie and Ruin. Compiling both He-Ho (minus “Proof,” replaced by the superi0r version that appeared on the Philadelphia hardcore comp Get Off Our Backs, and a different take of “Twilight”) and a remixed Fiat Lux along with five added tracks, it’s a refresher course for those who’ve forgotten and definitive proof to the uninitiated as to what made this band so special..
Ruin performed a handful of shows (with both Hutchins and Della Pelle on drums) to celebrate the release of Songs of Reverie and Ruin in late ’96.