Ruins of Beverast

Rain Upon the Impure

Van 2007

Germany's Ruins of Beverast return with an album that is more of everything than their debut, Unlock the Shrines.  Rain Upon the Impure is more brutal, ferocious, atmospheric, hate filled, well composed, and so on.  Like I said, "MORE."  Soliloquy of the Stigmatized Shepard ambles forward with a mournful dirge collapsing into the despair of some clean bass guitar before exploding into the some of the most memorable blasting black metal riffs I have heard in awhile.  The expanse of feelings and styles that are covered in a single song are mind numbing and are best exemplified by my favorite song, Blood Vaults.  I stumbles along with an awkward sort of beat and then hits its stride with some Gregorian sounding chants/clean vocals.  The title track makes good use of operatic vocal samples and dizzyingly fast blasts of infernal guitar throttling.  A guitar solo even seeps in to the song at about the 13 minute mark and crescendo's right as the song(as well as the album) is closing out with more operatic samples.  Alexander's typical vocals are so harsh they are like Boulders grinding on each other.  And those are just the straightforward elements.  The clean vocals, the Gregorian chants, the distorted riffs all combine across this writhing sea of artistic expressionism and manifest not only feelings of slowly burning embers of hatred but also that of sheer joy as a child experiencing something new.  Mainly because Rain Upon the Impure is pushing boundaries, nay smashing down boundaries like an Iron battering ram.  The main tracks on this album are lengthy with each of them clocking in at around 15 minutes.  I do have one minor complaint though and that is the sound on the disc is so low that I have to really turn up the sound a lot to hear all the elements clearly.  Ruins of Beverast have returned after too long of a silence with an album that exemplifies why they are a leading creative force within the fringes of obscure underground circles that encompass ritual makers of true dark art.  Ruins of Beverast are one of the best and most unique entities dwelling in the underground.