Ruin A Good Time

If you can get past the amateurish and adolescent cover art (a barren landscape over which naked, bleeding bodies are impaled on spikes and hung with something that looks like moss), you'll be rewarded with a roaring slab of by-the-numbers punk metal that goes very nicely with the artwork and offers not much more than the visual imagery in terms of originality and inspiration. The best thing about this album, frankly, is its production quality, which manages to juxtapose a monstrous guitar-bass-drums roar with crystal-clear vocals and lyrics that are easily comprehensible. The worst thing about it, unfortunately, is the lyrics, which range from simply awkward ("Send 'em all straight to hell not gone yet living to tell/Make sure to keep out of trouble") to just plain dumb ("The right to bear let's have a gun/In murders we are number one"). The music itself works well enough, apart from the occasional dorky "oh-oh-oh" vocalisms and ham-handed guitar solos. The song worth holding out for is "Vice," which doesn't offer much lyrically, but delivers the faster-harder-louder sonic goods in spades.