Ruho - The Devout Thrum

RUHO - The Devout Thrum (FALLEN TEMPLE - CD 2020)

A pack of CDs came from Fallen Temple and Ruho is one of the latest releases of this label. This band is from Finland and was formed back in 2009, but I honestly have never heard of them before. But they have a bunch of demos, splits and now two full length albums in discography, which is quite a solid set. I don't know any of them, so forgive me if I won't compare "The Devout Thrum" to anything Ruho has done before. 

This new album is fairly solid dose of harsh black metal, which certainly will speak to all purists and most orthodox fans of this genre. Ruho doesn't really try to do anything extraordinary or uncommon, but they rip through with typical, fast, vicious and aggressive raw black metal, so characteristic for some other Finnish bands also. There's nothing really spectacular about it, but I think it's quite solid piece of black metal, for sure. First of all, I really like some riffs and ideas they show, like in "Unpure Shibboleth", where there's this quite infectious, mesmerizing melodic riff going through the mid part that I think sounds awesome. But I especially mean the whole "Devoured to Dust", which not only is the best song here, but it is also based on the most melodic and memorable riffs and harmonies. Which is also why it is the most interesting piece of the album. So, Ruho definitely knows how to capture the attention and their music if far from being useless and forgettable. 

I definitely like also that cold, hateful atmosphere of Ruho music, I think the production is not bad at all, especially for that sort of raw and simplistic black metal. A real challenge may come from the fact that the album contains only four tracks, but each is ten to fourteen minutes long. Ruho doesn't use any ambiental intros, acoustics, keyboards or whatever, everything is based on the standard harsh black metal playing with all its characteristics. So, you could imagine that after a while this album may start to sound a bit monotonous and you don't really know at what part of the song you are, because there are hardly any parts, which would let you distinguish it from the other. But it isn't that bad and especially thelast song shows that there’s a lot to expect from Ruho also in the future. 

Standout track: "Devoured to Dust" 

Verdict: 65/100