STONEHENGE

Occasionally, I get to visit a little used CD store which is around an hour away from where I live. A lot of the time, they don't have very much interesting stuff, but imagine my surprise while looking through their selection one day and finding this Ruins album there. Naturally, I absolutely had to pick it up, since I was just beginning into my (still going) Tatsuya Yoshida craze.

I hadn't heard much by the band before this, though I had heard enough to know what to expect. I definitely got what I expected, and almost 70 minutes of it. Furious, complex, incredible drumming and fuzzy bass, along with vocals in Yoshida's made up language. In other words, an amazing album from my point of view. A warning to those of you who aren't as interested in the noisier side of things, though - this is definitely not the Ruins album for you (in fact, why are you listening to Ruins if you're not a fan of the noisier side of things?). It's one of the more intense albums by the band I've listened to thus far, and it works well if you're into that kind of thing. Yoshida is probably the undisputed king of Japanese drummers, and he has an unnatural talent for finding amazing bassists/others to play around him. Kazuyoshi Kimoto is definitely no exception to this - he's such an agile bass player, able to keep up with all of the frantic twists and turns presented in the compositions on the album.

If you're a fan of bizarre, energetic music, you would do well to check Ruins out - this may not be the best starting point, but if you want to jump right in to the madness, then it would work incredibly well for that. I can't recommend this album enough - I'll give it a 4-star rating, though only because I realize that Ruins isn't exactly most people's cup of tea - eventually this might move up to a 5.