Amazon.com Fan Review - Clint Brewer!

Thank you to Clint Brewer for the killer new fan review of our album just posted today at www.Amazon.com - WOW! We have to post this awesomeness and share it with you! xo

5/5 - My Ruin hit a metal home run with new album!
November 4, 2010
By Clint Brewer (Mt. Juliet, Tennessee USA)

The two-piece Los Angeles band My Ruin have been all about breaking with the metal status quo over their 10-year existence. Their new album "Ghosts & Good Stories" takes their DIY attitude toward heavy music a step beyond by breaking most of the accepted boundaries and conventions of the often narrow-minded metal community. The result is an album which drives and stomps effortlessly through genres, blending heavy musical style after style into an ultimately unique sound that arrives and delivers real rock in a modern musical landscape where there is far too little. Call it Murphy's New Law. Husband and wife team Tairrie B. Murphy (throat/spoken word/lyrics) and Mick Murphy (lead guitar and all other instruments) hit a heavy metal homerun with their new album.

Let's start here: Tairrie's pointed views on social issues, religious imagery and often taboo viewpoints rival anything other cultural icons offer in terms of meaning or relevance. Imagine a female Marilyn Manson or Henry Rollins. The fact that as a persona she remains a cult figure and not a cultural icon is a testament to the dim bulbs that populate desks at major record labels in New York and Los Angeles. Rollins is a good place to start and end the discussion about My Ruin. Mrs. Murphy's delivery is somewhere between a Phil Anselmo and Rollins, shifting seamlessly between guttural growls, appropriately places screams and hair-raising spoken word. The fact that she is a she makes all those things that much better. She is a unique and under recognized vocalist in a sea of fakes and wanna-bees.

Then there is Mr. Murphy, whose grasp on making modern metal simply shames the competition. This My Ruin effort is a musical turning point for the band, and the reason is simple. Murphy is now accompanying himself on drums and bass, and the results are a real improvement over previous My Ruin albums. The music he now backs his wife up with is a unique mix of modern heavy metal that would be right at home on any Ozzfest stage but shows a mix of influences that far outpaces the competition. This My Ruin album while shaking the rafters also is very musical, technically and in terms of song quality.

These songs blend the crunch of a Pantera or Ozzy with the tech metal of earlier VoiVod and the minor key riffage of Black Flag or the Descendents. Throw in a heavy dose of Randy Rhoades and maybe a little "Rocks" era Joe Perry, and you might begin to derive the underpinnings of Murphy's strong, truly original riffs and aggressive leads. He might usher in a second age of the guitar hero with a couple of more records like this one. Throw all this together and you get an album that combines today's heaviest metal with the musicality of 80s' SoCal hardcore and some of the best classic hard rock ever made. Tairrie B. comes over the top of that with a tough and effective vocal delivery that completes the package. Life is full of bad music. If you want to hear original riffs again, real songs and lyrics that actually mean something, buy this album. It should be standard issue to fans out loud music everywhere.