Times are chaotic right now, as bad as they’ve probably been in my lifetime, or at least in my adulthood, and it seems silly to split hairs with art on the surface, but it’s actually pretty crucial. Do you want to put your money in the pocket of some fascist asshole who’s OK with all of this? If your answer is yes, please get the fuck out of here.

LA-based one-man black metal power Tumultuous Ruin has been one of the reliable ones the last few years as our world has grown more toxic, and his unflinching opposition to fascism and oppression is noteworthy and honorable. If you’re new to the band helmed by RH, his new EP “Never a Night So Dark” (the title is lifted from a John Brown quote) is the perfect entrance point. These four songs are culled from tracks he created for benefit releases so they all can live in a single home, and there’s an interesting cover thrown into the mix. The band’s style of black metal leans on the raw, untamed side, and this is a nice sampling to hopefully entice more folks to get into an artist whose heart is in the right place and can properly destroy.

“Undead Corpse of Empire” drills open, sooty growls clogging veins, screams by guest vocalist Stone Crow rippling down spines. The riffs lather as the battering ram gets meaner, the chorus rushing over bloody ground, melodies enrapturing, and some final shrieks jarring your senses. “Toward Their Chains” starts in clean eeriness, a slow-driving pace making you sustain every blow, mournful melodies dripping into a lapse of time. The playing goes cold as the sound surrounds your psyche, a quote from “Fellowship of the Ring” where Aragon laments, “It’s long since we had any hope,” making for a sobering message in these times. The playing continues to flood into time, blazing once more before coming to a rest. “Climate Chaos Manifest” ravages, a blistering force ripping at you, a brief gasp of calm lingering before incineration. A hammering force emerges and chews through rock, rushing and rampaging, a melodic black metal wave enveloping, leaving the carnage sizzling in gazey fervor. “Smothered Hope” is a cover of the Skinny Puppy track from 1984’s “Remission,” and it’s a properly blackened, even more sinister version of the bouncy, creaky original. It’s melodic and thornier, with RH doing a fine job translating Nivek Ogre’s strangulating voice but with his own dark flourish that makes it more sinister.

This compilation EP gives a nice glimpse of what Tumultuous Ruin do so well, and these four tracks pack enough punishment and righteous indignation to get a newcomer started on a really strong back catalog. The fact the band carries the banner for battling fascism and often has their work benefitting noble causes is another reason to toss some money their way as you know it won’t be funding assholes. This is a nice appetizer for whatever comes next for this band as well as a quick foray into Tumultuous Ruin, which always is worth your time and damage to your hearing.   

For more on the band, go here: https://tumultuousruin.bandcamp.com/

To buy the album, go here: https://fiadh.bandcamp.com/merch

Or here: https://tumultuousruin.bandcamp.com/album/never-a-night-so-dark-ep

For more on the label, go here: https://fiadh.bandcamp.com/merch