Metalcatto
Depression! Now that I have your attention, I know you might be wondering if In Ruins‘ album artwork does justice to the music contained within. Just look at it; I haven’t seen such genuinely miserable, hollow faces since the Soviet Union was still a functioning state. That is precisely why this new album, We Are All To Perish, should hit us harder than discovering our favorite band is playing in town only to find tickets sold out in seconds. Anyway, dry your tears elsewhere, because we need to review this agonizing ride.
Agonizing is indeed the appropriate word. We Are All To Perish is slow, crushing, and profoundly depressive Doom Metal that does its absolute best to honor the monolithic legacies of bands like Ahab or Esoteric. However, it crucially does not demand the same titanic, almost masochistic patience from its listener. You could actually sit down and absorb this album in a single session without feeling your life force being siphoned out of you, drop by drop. The album contains only a few, carefully constructed tracks, but they remain sufficiently dynamic and active enough for the attention span of the average, non-Doom-specialist Metalhead.
You might be concerned about the glacial pace of We Are All To Perish, and that is something I can genuinely understand. The album offers no shortcuts, no sudden tempo injections, and no cheap catharsis. It simply wants you to sit and remember all those devastating, quiet moments when you felt more alone than an eighty-year-old, estranged father abandoned in a cut-rate retirement home. The music conjures the sensation of a vast, indifferent shadow swallowing the sun whole, leaving us all behind to freeze and starve in the dark. Wow, that is some seriously uplifting imagery, so let’s pivot to the necessary criticisms for today.
I am not going to complain that We Are All To Perish is too long or that its deliberate pacing is daunting. If you are willingly engaging with Funeral Doom, you understand that slow, heavy endurance is simply the law of the jungle. However, I did end the album feeling that a more deliberate effort to break away from the established, traditional mold could greatly benefit In Ruins. As it stands right now, it remains genuinely difficult to distinguish this particular sound from the very bands I name-dropped two paragraphs ago as primary influences.
This is, unquestionably, the kind of album our colleague Pegah absolutely loses her mind over. It carries that relentless, climbing-the-summit-or-dying-trying mentality. If you are prepared for Doom metal capable of sending you straight back to weekly therapy sessions—even if it traffics in familiar, well-worn ideas—then In Ruins will faithfully honor its name and leave you exactly where the title suggests. You know what I mean, and I’ll spare you the groan-inducing pun.
Label: Meuse Music Records
Release date: March 13, 2026
Website: https://www.facebook.com/InRuins.ro/
Country: Romania
Score: 3.5/5.0
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