OMINOUS RUIN: “REQUIEM”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
May 062025
 

(Below we present DGR‘s review of a new album by California-based Ominous Ruin in advance of its release this coming Friday by Willowtip Records.)

Is it possible for a band to do a complete lateral in their music and yet feel as if they are starting from the same spot they stepped away from? Bay Area tech-death group Ominous Ruin have been around a little over ten years now, yet it sure does feel like with their new album Requiem the group have stepped out to soft-relaunch themselves.

You’d almost never guess it based off the gap of close to four years between releases – and a lot can happen in four years, mind – but it’s as if the Ominous Ruin crew effectively never stopped. Instead, they just did a step to the side and started over again with about the same bar in quality that they established on their album Amidst Voices That Echo In Stone as the starting point. The result is interesting, less cross-pollination among three different subsections of the tome of death metal and instead a laser-like focus on one particular chapter, the tech-death section. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: OMINOUS RUIN — “ETERNAL”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 232025
 

(written by Islander)

After a run of short releases beginning in 2011, the Bay Area band Ominous Ruin released a debut album in 2021 via Willowtip Records, Amidst Voices That Echo in Stone, that quickly attracted a lot of enthusiastic attention. As our own DGR wrote in his NCS review, “The band’s sound is one of multiple extreme genres in all-out combat with each other, fully unloading from the hyperactive Tech Death scene even as it drains the arsenal from a very Brutal Death inspired segment as well.” But he also highlighted the even further progressions that the album included as it moved forward, becoming more labyrinthine, more ominous, more unpredictable.

And now Ominous Ruin are returning, again on the Willowtip label, with their sophomore album Requiem. No less technically impressive or brutally bludgeoning than their debut, it nevertheless represents a noticeable evolution, providing an even more expansive array of sensations and moods (including ambient and acoustic passages) in a way that makes the album even more emotionally involving — and mind-bending — than their first one.

This was evident in the first video/single off the album, “Staring Into the Abysm,” and today we have further compelling evidence in our premiere of Ominous Ruin‘s video for the song “Eternal“. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY (PART 2): HEAVEN SHALL BURN, OMINOUS RUIN, BALMOG, CHAINSWORD HURSAN, KATATONIA, GHOST

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Apr 122025
 


Heaven Shall Burn – photo by Candy Welz

(written by Islander)

Fanatically determined to get both Parts of this roundup posted today, I took a 10-minute break after launching Part 1 and then dived into this one. I haven’t gone to the bathroom yet, but like Cory Booker I’m depending on Depends.

As discussed in Part 1, today’s already-large roundup mushroomed into an even bigger one after my pals Andy Synn and DGR threw 4 more songs into a mix that already included music from 10 bands.

As also discussed there, for you criminals who didn’t bother to read it, I used those 4 as bookends, 2 at the start and 2 at the finish. The 2 at the end have stressed out my usual NCS site-title boundary lines to the breaking point, but not for the first time. Continue reading »

OMINOUS RUIN- AMIDST VOICES THAT ECHO IN STONE

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Mar 112021
 

(Find out what our man DGR thought of the new album from San Francisco’s Ominous Ruin, out now on Willowtip Records.)

Ominous Ruin‘s first full length album – after a string of demo’s and EPs throughout the late aughts – Amidst Voices That Echo In Stone starts in a very different spot from where it ends up.

The band’s sound is one of multiple extreme genres in all-out combat with each other, fully unloading from the hyperactive Tech Death scene even as it drains the arsenal from a very Brutal Death inspired segment as well.

It’s an ambitious album for sure, but not one that feels intentionally crafted to become a journey – more that it just wound up that way as songs morphed over time, from that previously mentioned superspeed blast festival into something weirdly proggy, incredibly dense, and all too willing to dive headlong into some profoundly (and joyously) dumb caveman chug all over the course of nine songs.

If it seems like the Bay Area crew are one of those amorphous bands able to reach tentacles into a variety of places and drag down so much of it back into their maw by that descriptor, you wouldn’t be too far off, but the fact that they make it work here…now that’s worth talking about.

Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: OMINOUS RUIN – “ATTUNED TO THE CHASM”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jan 142021
 

 

Even if you’;re not suffering from covid you might want to have some supplemental oxygen on hand before you dive into this track we’re about to premiere, because it’s a breath-taker. And a spine-smasher. And a brain-scrambler.

The song is “Attuned to the Chasm“, and it’s the second single from Amidst Voices That Echo In Stone, which is the second album by the northern California technical death metal band Ominous Ruin. The record is set for release on February 26th by Willowtip Records. Continue reading »