review: Juliet Ruin

Juliet Ruin

Old Stardust, Love, and Chaos

6 September 2019

Juliet Ruin works with a lot of the aesthetics of metalcore and seeks to give it a sense of duality between melodic/pop and harder-edged sounds of post-2010 contemporary aggro metal. An indispensable approach for them is to make the songs catchy and very friendly to the listener, like radio rock, and then bring in the yelling-shouting vocals and heavier sounds to contrast with the poppy singing. The band is a good example of how younger generations have been finding their own ways of transforming hardcore, metalcore, melodic death metal and pop music. They even add some rapping/talking parts on the song “FTW,” even though they don’t seem exactly committed to the hip hop element; perhaps they are too afraid of being criticized for doing too much or for bringing a bit of a hip hop flavor to the music.

The screaming/yelling sounds pretty good for what it is, it’s serviceable, but it’s the singing that stands out more. It’s soft singing that wouldn’t be out of place in a pop song. The singing at times seems underdeveloped or timid, but this is early in the career of the band; it’s bound to improve on future recordings. The music is part mosh, part happy, as you would expect. Unfortunately, they are limiting themselves by cursing in the songs in what seems to be an attempt to sound tough, but this just means less people are potential customers. It may seem cool or very metal, but the result will be that less people will choose to listen to ear-friendly music if it has a bunch of cursing.

Overall, this is the work of a young band working their influences into something that they can call their own sound. It’s a more contemporary interpretation of metalcore and pop music. It’s music with a pretty big potential for commercial appeal (both the music and the image), especially for adolescents and the younger generations getting into heavy rock. facebook.com/julietruinband/