Review: The Ruins of Beverast - “Foulest Semen of a Sheltered Elite” (2009)
The Ruins of Beverast’s last two albums were built on a foundation of dark and oppressive atmospheric black metal. The band’s latest release basically continues along those lines, which makes it easily better than what lots of bands these days are putting out. That said, I’m not sure I like the direction things are going. Whereas Rain Upon The Impure felt like it took the essential elements from he debut and formed an epic, monstrous album out of them, Foulest Semen of a Sheltered Elite takes the opposite approach, broadening the sound of the last album with some additional experimentation. I’m not saying that The Ruins of Beverast should stagnate and make the same album over and over again, but I thought that the changes in the band’s sound on this new release were somewhat of a distraction from the band’s usual uncompromising approach.
The most obvious change is the use of clean singing. The creepy choir sounds and growled vocals are still present of course, but more passages are now driven by clean vocal melodies. The first track, ‘I Raised This Stone as a Ghastly Memorial’ actually utilizes them quite well, revolving around a simplistic, plodding guitar riff coupled with an imposing vocal line. Unfortunately some other instances of the clean singing on the album don’t flow nearly as well with the music, such as in ‘Blood Vaults (II: Our Despots Cleanse the Levant)’ and ‘Kain’s Countenance Fell’. Aside from the clean singing, even the rough vocals have been modified slightly, changing from the unique half-growl/half-whisper that was so potent on the early albums to almost a straight death growl. While it’s still effective, I really liked The Ruins of Beverast’s old vocal delivery so that change comes as kind of a disappointment.
I also felt like the song quality was less consistent; some of the songs on the album just didn’t impress me. From what I’ve read it sounds like plenty of fans don’t agree with me on that point though. If you enjoyed the epic song lengths and slow-moving doomy approach the band took on Rain Upon The Impure, the general approach on Foulest Semen of a Sheltered Elite is very similar. Plus, this album contains two of the awesomest songs the band’s ever written in ‘I Raised This Stone as a Ghastly Memorial’ and especially ‘Blood Vaults (II: Our Despots Cleanse the Levant)’. So if you’re already a fan of the band I wouldn’t necessarily dissuade you from picking this up, but for everyone else I would say go for the band’s older two albums first.
