Ruined Soul - My Dying Day

Published April 21 2010

*=Staff's pick	My Dying Day Rivers Of Blood* Destruction Death Gives New Life Rewind Bleeding Tears Of Guilt Inner Piece Divided* Alone*

Genre	Powered Death Metal	See review	Vocals
Tracks	10	Johnny Johansson	Guitar
Runningtime	37 Min.	See review	Guitar
Label	Suicide Records	Johnny Johansson	Bass
Release	23 April 2010	See review	Drums
Country	Sweden	-	Keyboard
Similar artists	Children Of Bodom, Scar Symmetry, Faithful Darkness

Ruined Soul is the brainchild of Disdain's Johnny Johansson. He has written every note, all the lyrics and melodies, and is playing both guitars and bass on "My Dying Day". With him he has an array of people helping out with the vocal and drumming parts :

Jonas Kjellgren (Scar Symmetry), Matias Kupiainen (Stratovarius), Marios Iliopoulos (Nightrage), Niklas Stålvind (Wolf), Benny Jansson (Ride The Sky), Eric Rauti (Dreamland), Jonas Hörnqvist (Treasure Land), Tobias Jansson (The Law), Janne Stark (Constancia), Olof Mörck (Nightrage), Peter Huss (Shining), Patrik Johansson (Arise).

As with all projects of this kind there is always a bit of risk involved - for the most part having a singular mastermind behind an album opens up for the possibility of total failure, or on the other hand, total success. Ruined Soul isn't either, but quite simply a fairly good album with some good songs, and some not so good.

The first listenings of the album left me quite satisfied - I have always enjoyed the music of Scar Symmetry and Faithful Darkness, two band whose music I can find traces of in Ruined Soul's - but pretty soon the album faded to one of those that leave you with the feeling that you've heard it all before. In this day and age this is a critical flaw in my opinion. Regardless of how good you are at actually handling instruments - if a band doesn't have the songs an album quickly gets thrown onto the garbage heap.

"My Dying Day" however does have some good songs - Alone and Divided really makes me pressing on the repeat button quite often - and it's the same with Rewind and Rivers Of Blood that offer some very aggressive playing and the title track with its solid groove and aggravated playing a bit into the song.

But as a whole "My Dying Day" isn't a record that you remember for very long, and the good songs aren't as many as would have been necessary for me to keep me interested in Ruined Soul's coming releases should there be any.

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
5	4	6	6	5

Summary
5 chalices of 10 - Martin