I will not swallow the lie of progress, the myth of blue skies from sunrise to sunset. I will not chew on broken glass and smile as my ripped and tattered mouth spills blood onto my emaciated chest. I will not cheer the liars, gazing upon them with tear-glazed eyes, whispering to myself ‘I’ve never had it so good’. My eyes will stay open as they strip me of all but my skin and I’ll hide the pills beneath my pillow filled with ashes so that I feel every cut they administer. My life will hurt me to the end but it will be honest, it will be real and it will be mine. I will accept nothing but the truth in all its grim and grinding weight…and as it breaks me, my knowledge of it will sustain me as all the poisoned joys they feed me never will.
Hailing from Bristol, UK, Row Of Ashes are conductors of noise, channellers of its power and their excoriating music taps into the raw, chaotic essence of volume overload. Noise is their tool, their weapon as they shatter the walls of misdirection and wilful self-deception. After the impressive opening gambit of their first album, 2017s Let The Long Night Fade, the band trimmed down to a three piece and headed for even darker, more turbulent waters. Through 2020s Unbeliever and 2022s Bleaching Heat, Row Of Ashes became ever more uncompromising and defiant, their raging songs a shocking collision of sludge, noise, post-hardcore and extreme metal. Now they are ready to unleash the most untrammelled and uncontrollable outpouring of their art, surfing on the cusp of the insurmountable power of the elements, this is Tide Into Ruin…
Opening with the driving, forceful hardcore grit of ‘Leveller’, a caustic eruption of sound with an aura of unease hanging spectre-like behind the lashing, bruising attack, Tide Into Ruin is a formidable listening experience. The tracks – from the panicked, adrenalized guitars of ‘Imber’ to the bulldozing monument of agony and gritted teeth that is ‘Icon’ – are united by noise and chaos, but differentiated by the shapes and structures that form, dissolve and reform within the tempest. The doomed, lumbering riffs of ‘Immoralist’ take you on a caravan through a post-apocalyptic wasteland – raw, ragged but viscerally alive. ‘Wake’ immerses you in a shocking sense of loss, building to a climax that is too much, too much, too much…and with ‘Coda’ you find yourself dazed, sitting amidst the wreckage, surveying your scars…until the song awakes and eats you alive and your atoms disperse through a dying universe. Row Of Ashes pour everything they have, everything they are into each note that they play, into this soul shattering wall of sound. You can taste the integrity, the intensity of expression and the honesty of emotion. Bloodied, broken but never defeated, Row Of Ashes have never been so vital and essential.
Tide Into Ruin will be released on June 13th by Road To Masochist on vinyl, digipak CD and digital formats. It will carry you to haunted, empty places, shake you with its wild, unfathomable force, drown you in emotion and electrify you with its untainted purity of expression. Nothing else you hear this year will hit you quite like this album.
Line-up:
Chris Wilson – Bass and Vocals
Will Turner Duffin – Guitar
Dan Arrowsmith – Drums
Genre: Post-hardcore / Noise Metal
For fans of: Will Haven | Neurosis | Kowloon Walled City | Slabdragger
Further Information:
https://www.facebook.com/RowofAshesband
https://roadtomasochist.co.uk/
https://www.facebook.com/roadtomascochist/
