Ruadh is a project that popped into our EP/albums list to review and that cheerfully caught my attention since it placed itself in a sub-genre for which I have a flourishing interest – atmospheric black metal.
Even better, the themes relate to Scottish history and nature, which would somewhat be a modest link to folklore so this was indeed likely to be another point scored. So is this debut album contributing to the birth of an engaging, thrilling atmospheric black metal scene in Glasgow ?
Not really.
It indeed uses analogous characteristics of who would be the pioneer – Saor – such as the starting, the growling style and the aspirations when it comes to the ambience wanted. Similar, yet not comparable. An overwhelming naivety gets the upper hand through an overall lack of refinement. The approaches are too simple, too classic and are disguised as atmospheric using mainly keyboards and long tracks. As a result, it creates unsurprising compositions which make it feel everything is on the first song and the rest is only repetition.
So to conclude, this is not entirely bad for a first album and the ideas on paper are interesting. However it still has a lot to improve and work on to match the image it is sold on.
