This World Is Going To Ruin You is a destructive record. Vein.fm are a destructive band, as evidenced on their debut full-length Errorzone and subsequent run of touring dates with the likes of Parkway Drive, While She Sleeps and Crossfaith in 2019. But where Errorzone welcomed listeners into Vein’s sonic powder keg on the promise of unlimited adrenaline and hyperactivity alone, the Boston five-piece return with a more sinister, dreading and claustrophobic approach throughout This World…
Of course, fans of the band’s work up to this point will feel right at home, immersed in the battering ram riffage and panic-chord driven hysteria found in tracks like The Killing Womb and Lights Out, which provide brief but pummelling slabs of grooves and breakdowns like an updated version of Converge’s When Forever Comes Crashing. Frankly, the notion of how crowds will respond to these cuts at future shows is a terrifying and thrilling prospect.
One can consider Vein.fm’s back catalogue up to this point to be the result of the gnarliest parts of contemporary heavy music being thrust in a food processor, and shoved down listeners’ throats like a mixture of sawdust and nails. Blistering mathcore-inspired drum arrangements and chord progressions suddenly burst into breakdown sections that wouldn’t sound out of place on Slipknot’s self-titled record, evidenced poignantly on Inside Design where turntable effects emphasise the pure frenzy of its outro.
Even at its more melodic moments, This World… remains as cut-throat and savage as its more frenetic tracks. Geoff Rickley’s appearance on Fear In Non-Fiction ought to provide some sort of respite, but acts more like a crescendo the track has built up for any moshing to go into full overdrive.
Tracks like Wavery and closer Funeral Sound showcase the band’s slower and more ambient song writing, and allow frontman Anthony DiDio to sing in a hushed and brooding tone. These moments add more to the abstract nature of the record, and when Funeral Sound climaxes from an isolated piano backdrop into the full band’s final battle charge, listeners are thrown off course to find the last section to be an epic melodic climax, rather than a final atonal beatdown part.
This World Is Going to Ruin You is intelligently designed chaos. As a listener, one is constantly left surprised by what direction Vein.fm move in, as they constantly explode in a cramped space like fireworks being set off in a stationery cupboard.
Vein.fm have pushed themselves to the edge sonically, musically, physically and creatively to make this album. And even if it does just feel like mindless destruction, it will be difficult to find another record this year that destroys its listeners as ambitiously as this one does.
9/10
Standout Tracks: Fear In Non-Fiction, Inside Design, Funeral Sound
For Fans Of: Jesus Piece, End, Converge
Written by: Andrew Davidson
