Review Summary: In a black box.
With
Education, Greek hardcore act Ruined Families strike a killer balance of victory and collapse - the kind that probably results from a series of abstruse personal conflicts. One can imagine the financial crisis in Greece being a catalyst of frustration, but
Education doesn’t really come off as a reflexive punk album. Its construction doesn’t really convey the frankness of a protest anthem; imagine the ethos of tree-sitting, but instead of waiting in the sky, you succumb to the sewers. The group’s sound is a bedlam of blackened punk, sludge, and noise rock, with addictive riffs and catchy vocal hooks throughout. There’s a ton of content in the (mostly) sub-two-minute runtimes, and, with the jagged deliveries, Ruined Families’ newest offers plenty of replay value to help sift through the muddle of broken glass and excrement.
Opener “The Future of Electronic Music” is a breakneck ebb and flow of soaring guitar work, rapid-fire drumming, piercing distortion, and pissed, gutted vocals. Tracks like “Demolition” reinforce the band’s triumphant caving-in (“
I hide my face / for everyone to see”). “No Rothko” ’s instrumentation at the twenty-second mark is about as catchy as what you’d hope for from a
Pity Sex tune, but soon devolves into a sound deserving of previous comparisons to
Cursed. “Whole Car” is an emotive highlight, despite being the most straightforward number in terms of layout. In the midst of its disarray,
Education has moments of cemented fury; closer “We Want Everything”, for example, is a mission statement of sorts. In the band’s own words: “
[…]We want to construct visions of the future that are more inclusive and equal for all. Our volatile bodies act as barriers and battlefields. We may be ugly and strange, but we are determined. […]We want everything.”
Education doesn’t embody a band driven by specific political battles, but, rather an all-consuming war.
