My Ruin - The Ghost Road
Punishingly heavy yet capable of immense emotional range, My Ruin have carved a unique niche for themselves in the metal world, writes Alison B - But what sets them firmly apart from the horn-throwing hordes is far more than an infamous fondness for Catholic kitsch and biblical imagery; truly unreplicable is the chemistry between front woman Tairrie B Murphy’s startling lung power, passion and lyrical flair, and guitarist husband Mick Murphy’s knack for rumbling, earth-shuddering riffage. As the band’s beating heart, the couple have kept faith through a decade in which they have taken more than any act’s fair share of personnel changes and business backstabbing. However, when a long silence followed a particularly tough 2008 tour, it seemed even their thick skins had at last taken enough. Tairrie tells now how they brought My Ruin back from the brink, to issue last year’s sixth studio album Ghosts and Good Stories.
Now that you’re back, are you able to pinpoint what set eventually Ghosts and Good Stories in motion and snapped you out of the long period of disillusionment that followed the 2008 UK tour?
It wasn’t something we really planned. Although we had had some fun with our side-project recordings [in the interim], I think we both felt it was time to write with My Ruin in mind because we had a lot inside of us that we still needed to get out and express. Mick started to demo the music for our songs over a few months and I began putting my thoughts into lyrics and it sort of just began to happen naturally like it always does. All of our albums seem to be centered on their own personal concept in one way or another. Many long dark nights of the soul inspired both the ‘ghosts’ and ‘good stories’ of our new album and gave it an otherworldly almost sacrosanct theme for us that I feel is very unique and our own musically speaking.
From the old family portrait on the cover in, Ghosts and Good Stories finds you looking to your roots for inspiration - what led you there?
It’s funny you would say that. I actually joined Facebook in 2009 and not long after I was contacted by a long lost relative and began having a great deal of communication with her about our family. I came across the vintage shot of my great grandparents in front of their home in a box I had stashed away when we were trading photos back and forth. I kept it on my office desk for weeks while we were writing and it seemed to speak to me in some strange way. When I came up with the name for the album, the photo eerily just fit the title. I felt like it represented so many things beyond what it was. It also inspired the closing track on the album Deathknell which is a very doom heavy style story like a love letter I wrote to Mick. Like all My Ruin albums, religion and relationships always play muse to me when it comes to my writing. The Bible is a constant source of inspiration as is my life and the people who seem to come in and out of it over time.
Following trust issues in the last line-up you opted to record as a two piece. How did you overcome those issues when putting together a live band for the March tour?
My Ruin is my rock love child with Mick. It’s our baby and no one loves it the way we do and we don’t expect them to. We’ve learned over time that we can only rely on ourselves at the end of the day and that’s okay. At this point we just want to surround ourselves with cool people who are great musicians and fun to be around. It’s not worth all the drama having certain bizarre personalities in the band and having to deal with what that entails. On our March tour we will be joined on drums by Matt LeChevalier who previously toured with My Ruin from 2005-2007. He’s part of our family. Luciano Ferrea will be playing bass with us. Both guys are super talented musicians and we’re looking forward to sharing the stage with them in 2011.
My Ruin live dates:
09 March @ Thekla, Bristol
10 March @ The Railway Inn, Winchester
11 March @ Camden Underworld, London
14 March @ Club Revolution, Winchester
15 March @ Classic Grand, Glasgow
16 March @ The Cockpit, Leeds
17 March @ Rock City, Nottingham
18 March @ Hammerfest III, Prestatyn, North Wales
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