Ruined Families are another band entering the hardcore sweepstakes. The band hailing from Greece carries the torch that Cursed carried. Meaning you're in for heavy nasty sounding hardcore with metal influence. The band stay fast and gritty throughout the album leaving little doubt that they are beyond pissed. Much like the aforementioned Cursed the lyrics stay on a more personal level keeping to disenchantment and inner turmoil as opposed to expressing the obvious flaws that they have been fraught with in Greece as of late.
The guitars on this album stay in the forefront of each song. They remain over driven and beyond gritty sounding. This helps to carry a certain level of sludge and frustration without relying on the lyrics alone. When the guitars slow down at brief intervals is when the power of this sound really takes hold. The guitars build more dreary sounding structures within each song making for a dire sounding record overall. Every once in awhile a slight bit of melody will peak in through the cloud of distortion. This makes for those brief moment becoming a strong piece of the song.
The rhythm section is strong throughout. The bass remains rather simple but over driven enough to carry some of the weight for the guitars making for a heavier backdrop. The drummer shows some serious initiative throughout the disc adding smart fills within each song helping to change the tempo slightly and making each song more interesting along the way.
The cursed comparison is only kept up by the vocals. While certainly not the same as Chris Colohan, they take his throaty rasping style and expand upon it. While that rasp stays as the main vocal weapon throughout the vocalist will sometimes favor a a higher pitch. This is generally not the case as higher register vocals get handled by the backup vocalists. The style of vocals adds a very strong dimension to the songs themselves. Carrying with them an even more overbearing sense of desperation. This really helps the songs to reverberate with the listener.
There are only a couple minor issues one could have with this release. The first of which is the artwork. The layout is simple but leaves little to show anything personal about the bands style. Meanwhile, the cover art itself feels rather bland when compared to the bands songs. The other complaint lies more in the fact that the album feels far too short. While no one is saying they should make an hour long record (which generally doesn't work with this style of music), it would be nice to have something long than the sub 30 minute run time that it is.
