Blame Kandinsky: Eclectic Extremity
The clue is in the first half of the name: Eclectic Ruiner is many things. Raw and urgent, yet often exceptionally technical; furious and raging, and yet not without beauty or melody. If you like any of BOTCH, CONVERGE, BIRDS IN ROW or EVERY TIME I DIE, you’ll have an absolute riot with it, but arguably more important than any of its obvious influences is the passion of the band at its core.
That band is BLAME KANDINSKY – a mathcore four-piece housed within the vibrant and diverse Athens scene – and as guitarist Marios Samaris and bassist Kostas Antoniou explain to us over email, the passion we hear on their newest record is a product of “trying not to restrain our feelings when playing or writing for BLAME KANDINSKY, sticking to our common vision for music and becoming as expressive as we can within terms of musicality. This brings freedom, as artists and as human beings.”
You’d think such freedom might have brought this record around a little sooner than it did. It’s been five years since the band released their debut Spotting Elegance In Chaos, but with a hefty nod to the obvious, it’s taken them a while to get round to album number two. “Eclectic Ruiner’s songs were almost fully composed and rehearsed during some of the consecutive lockdowns during the pandemic, which is itself one of the most unprecedented emergencies humanity has recently been in,” the duo explain. “We were obviously affected by all the unknown events that the world has suffered through. Our musical taste and lyrical approach evolved during this gap between the two albums and the band’s line-up changed too, so it was exciting to discover our ability to adapt to these new conditions, both for the writing and performing process.”
“The two albums are two totally different worlds,” they continue. “Spotting Elegance In Chaos was recorded in five days of live sessions and then we tracked all vocals over the band’s live performance. What we wanted to achieve by that was to keep it simple and spontaneous – as aggressive and original as it could get. We fancy challenges like that! But this time we didn’t want to repeat ourselves, we recorded our parts separately. It took us more than a month to finish Eclectic Ruiner’s recordings but we kept our same attitude of straightforwardness. Our goal was to capture the result of us rehearsing and make it come out bigger without exaggerating any element. There are no second or third guitars or millions of vocals overdubs so we can deliver it live as is.”
As with many bands of their ilk, it really is all about the live experience, and Samaris and Antoniou both suggest that it is exactly this which has helped BLAME KANDINSKY to become a tighter and more focused outfit in the years since they released Spotting Elegance In Chaos. “Live performances are really important to us,” they offer. “It is vital to be able to perform our material live, in its whole, which is a fact we took into consideration when recording. It affected us in a way of getting to be more confident in ourselves and believing in the band’s own character. What is a lesson to be learned from our gig experience is sincerity with ourselves and with the audience.”
That sincerity spills into the lyrical themes of the album too, with Eclectic Ruiner centred on a broad concept of everyday struggle made clear enough through track titles like Ruined, Discomfort and Delusional. It’s a bleak record for bleak times, and while the band acknowledge that they don’t want to “spread a downer”, they have to admit that they don’t see much hope at the moment. “The world just evolves in a capitalistic regime waving a giant flag of injustice above everyone’s head,” they suggest. “The majority of people are not satisfied with their lives and we don’t even have the time to deal with it because our digitalised routines are running at light speed. Hope is attached to the sense that things are getting better, but I believe that things can only be different from now on.”
Fortunately, the band are a lot more optimistic when it comes to the music, and particularly to the Greek scene they call home. “The Greek contemporary hardcore scene may be small, but it consists of really powerful bands,” they explain as they help plug our knowledge gaps on a somewhat unfairly overlooked corner of the world of extreme music. “Most of them are trying to implement their own approach and style into their sound as we think we do. We have shared the stage with some of them and every time has been a great experience. Bands can be really helpful to each other so we are really glad to be a part of this community. It is really hopeful and inspiring to know that there are other people sharing a similar passion for this genre.”
In Samaris and Antonoiou‘s eyes, this is a marked improvement on the environment in which the band was born a full decade ago now. It’s no wonder they are eager to hit the road again soon, and their hope is not only that listeners will enjoy the music, but that they will “find something in it that they can connect with and resonate in some way.” We don’t doubt that they will.
Eclectic Ruiner is out now via Venerate Industries.
Like BLAME KANDINSKY on Facebook.