CREATURE

Creature is the debut full-length album from Within the Ruins, and it's also their first release for major extreme metal label Victory Records. Their first two EP's didn't do much to impress me, but nonetheless I gave Creature a few spins just to see if they'd made some improvements since their rough beginning. While a slight improvement over their previous two releases, Creature is still plagued by the lifeless compositions and generic stylistic traits that restrain my enthusiasm for this band in general. Within the Ruins certainly know how to handle their instruments, but I fail to find anything on Creature that strikes me as a worthwhile musical experience.

The music on Creature lies somewhere between deathcore, technical death metal, and melodic death metal. While Within the Ruins fails at sounding too different from the hordes of deathcore outfits on the scene today, their tech-metal edge does keep things more interesting than one might expect. The tech-metal portions are pretty dry and unmemorable, but I'd take them any day over the torturous one-note breakdowns and gang-styled vocals that Creature relies upon far too heavily. As a standalone technical death metal album, Creature may have been pretty interesting - those jagged transitions between sections and dreadful breakdowns really drag down my enjoyment, though. This album is honestly a mess from a compositional standpoint, and the entire lack of memorability and coherence is ultimately Creature's greatest downfall.

Though a flawed album in many regards, this debut isn't entirely without its assets. Within the Ruins are a group of impeccable musicians (especially in the guitar department), and Creature's blinding solos and furious start-stop dynamics show within minutes that these guys have quite a bit of experience at their respective instruments. The production is also pretty good, even though the drums sound too triggered for my liking.

Overall, Creature is more or less what I expected from a Within the Ruins album at this point - fantastic musicianship and quality production, unfortunately matched with lifeless compositions and unmemorable riffs. Hardly a rewarding musical experience in any sense of the word, the most I can give Creature is 2 stars. If Within the Ruins honed in on their tech-death metal side and ditched the sterile songwriting, they may have a lot to offer - until that happens, you can easily put them in the overwhelmingly large category of deathcore bands that simply fail to deliver.