Just last month Bitter Loss Records released the debut album of the Australian band Idle Ruin (from Brisbane). Entitled The Fell Tyrant, it unleashed nine tracks of mainly full-throttle thrashing death, hurling the listener into one exhilarating escapade after another, propelled by bone-splintering drumwork, iron-shod bass lines, wild-eyed guitar work, and larynx-lacerating vocal extremity.

Idle Ruin packed each song with head-spinning twists and turns as well as spine-slugging and skull-smacking grooves, channeling mayhem, madness, and a general air of marauding savagery. The album’s explosive energy was (and is) potent enough to power massive turbines, but the band also picked their moments to downshift their racing speed, darken the mood, make room for surprising instrumental maneuvers, and plow up the pavement with bursts of jolting (and highly headbangable) brutishness.

And although there’s an abundance of guitar soloing through the album, the “personalities” of those solos change repeatedly, sometimes exotic, sometimes ecstatic, sometimes despairing, and sometimes downright berserk.

The album’s opening track, “Shackled for Adornment“, sets the stage for this mind-bender of a record in electrifying fashion, and that’s the song which is the subject of the video we’re premiering today. It was filmed at the The Fell Tyrant album launch show at The Bearded Lady venue in Brisbane on January 21st of this year. Continue reading »