Ruin

Very west end musical sort of vibe. I was going to give it 3 stars but then I realised how much I enjoyed the drama of it!

'The Amazing Devil' actually amazed me. It's folk, but with a high percentage of rock (and even slight traces of hard rock). Lyrically, this album is very poetic (I mean, have you read the lyrics of Inkpot Gods for example). This album went fast from "unknown to me" to "man, I love this"

I'm done with indie folk.

Music that theater kids would make for their point-and-click fantasy game that’s a painfully unsubtle metaphor for being bullied in high school.

Great find.

Okay so why do I like that decemberists hazards of love album but not this. Like why is hazards of love a great concept album but this sounds like theater kid cringe to me. Must be something with the production since this sounds like it’s from a stage musical but my ears rejected this even though the sound isn’t that far off from music that I really enjoy.

I liked this as music, though I remained on the fence about the sort of combination of a Folk Epic sound with twee cell-phone era romantic travail lyrics. I'll slide it an extra star for oddity and singularity.

Rating: 7/10 Best songs: Secret worlds, Inkpot gods

It was fine. It felt...I don't know...pretentious? But I didn't hate it. Harmonies were nice. It's not something I'd ever listen to again, but it wasn't bad at all. I guess indie folk isn't my genre. Inkpot Gods was nice, though.

It's alright, a bit too theatrical for me. 3 stars.

Tolerable for indie folk. I liked the vocal harmonies. Got a bit long in the tooth towards the end though, and overall still a bit too twee. The swearing was intentionally at odds with the music, but.... eh? I guess you'd have to like it before you'd say it was clever or effective. I don't think I'll ever like this genre. 3/5.

The Wikipedia page is not correct, so I can't detect what story there is in this album. It seems to me to be more of an indie troubadour proposal with momentary high choruses looking for epicness to stand out. The truth is that, given the cover, I was expecting something more challenging in terms of rock, but well, we are always going to be surprised by album covers.

Wow! Fun and occasionally epic

I wasn’t excited at another indie folk band… oh how misguided my brain was. The opening track, Secret Worlds, had me hooked immediately. Quick aside: After listening to over 1200 albums for this project my brain reacts negatively to almost every new thing that pops up here - and yet I end up loving the majority of the selections. Where else would I have discovered a group like The Amazing Devil? Weird though that my brain thinks it’s fatigued every time I get a something new to me here… even after all these great discoveries! As this album progressed I got goosebumps numerous times! Fantastically theatrical and completely riveting. What a great addition to my library!

Loud and big and theatrical. I can imagine a day when it might seem too much but that day is not today.

The cover art has my interest. Let's have a listen. I'm not usually one for "folk singer/songwriter" - but this album is the fuckin' tits, yo. The old witch sleep and the good man grace... What a track!

Wow.. That was brilliant!! Amazing lurics and melodies.. Nice surprise to discover new music.

Even not exactly the type of music I enjoy every day, it's finally a user suggestion that shows something different and enjoyable in discovering (different and newish, but with strong bolds on some kind of traditional music). This is the type of thing that the original list really sticks to achieving, but fails in a myriad of repetitive, hidden British sea of indie albums. If I need to listen to more British albums, I'd be glad for more of this.

liked it, it's very "theatre kids" though 3.7

Indie folk. Me ha gustado. Un 4.

It's a very "dramatic" album with plenty of musical gravitas. A lengthy album that doesn't really reach beyond that, however. Makes a lot of use of acoustic guitars to give it that additional oomph. Interesting. The last song put it into the 4 range for me.

I wasn't into this, but it just got more and more enjoyable lyrically, and that made me warm to the slightly OTT dramatics of the music till I really started to enjoy the whole thing a lot. I will be coming back to this one. Intriguing

Glad that I gave it a second listen.

Very dramatic indie folk album, I did enjoy it even though it comes across as pretentious posh theatre kids at times. Overall I think this is Good choice for an album selection.

Fun light airy renaissance faire vibes. Very cool

Hooked me immediately and unexpectedly. I'm liking these epic folk albums

A geordie duo, both actors, who love a melodramatic bombastic story song. An interesting choice, with no clear roots in time or place (accents aside), and which i thoroughly enjoyed

This was quite something. Will definitely listen again. Thank you to whoever added this. Has definite musical overtones a la Hadestown.

Indie folk. Me ha gustado. Un 4.

What the fuck even is this? There's no wikipedia page, which I wanted to look at just to see what you call this genre. I'm calling this Epic Folk. It's cool. Not at all what I was expecting from the cover art, but it's very well executed. Their duets are well-constructed, and they each really hold up their end. The music is really stirring and goes on these great slow builds. 4/5, someone make a wikipedia page for this band so I know what the fuck they are

I guess it's the theater kid inside, but I kinda love this.

It's Jaskier from "The Witcher!" Some of these songs definitely have a bit of a Jaskier vibe too. The modern themes and language in a style that reminds me of traditional folk ballads and a bard from a fantasy show felt a bit off a couple of times, but overall I enjoyed The Amazing Devil.

Soars much more than the cover art would imply. Despite initial misgivings I wound up liking it quite a lot.

"'Cause if God made us all in his image, Then God's a fucking nerd." Lyrics like that do earn extra points, I must say. But all-in-all I don't find it a very remarkable album in the indie-folk genre. Enjoyable, but that's about it.

You know it’s going to be good when you can’t find a Wikipedia page for any of it

Very dramatic hard-edged folk (British folk rock?)

Yeah, this was a bit overwrought in places. I didn't particularly connect with it, but I appreciate the creativity. Fave Songs: The Calling, Ruin, Chords

This has the feeling of an offbroadway-level Disney animated movie soundtrack. Dramatic and theatrical, and a little overserious. An interesting listen.

There must be a modern folk revival that passed me by as there is a lot of 2020s folk on the user list. This is more interesting than most of it's contemporaries on the list and gets good when it gets big and textured. Rating: 3.5 Playlist track: Inkpot Gods Date listened: 13/12/24

Ruin of The Amazing Devil is a nice album with folk and rock songs. The songs vary between ballads, folk songs and accoustic hard/prog rock (a bit like Tenacious D). Sometimes the performance is a slighty too much dramatic and it gets annoying.

Folksy blues for the theater-nerd set.

Whe I read that it was the band from The Witcher's bard actor, I was a little skeptical, but the first song really impressed me. Overall I enjoyed this album, a lot of really intense moments, but I was left underwhelmed by some of the more softer and acoustic passages. Still a fun listen, great suggestion. 7/10

Better than I thought!

An interesting folksy type alternative album but nothing really stuck with me. I'm digging the album cover though, very cool shot.

There are one or two tracks on Ruin I really, really like; The Calling is the best of those because the girl's voice and stylings get very close to Sharon den Adel from Within Temptation territory, and they're a bit of a guilty pleasure band of mine. The rest of this is okay, it's sort of like if Riverdance was borne of a different sound and mythology, there's a real aura and atmosphere to it all but because it teases me with some soaring highs that aren't there throughout, and it's just a bit too folksy and slow in those slower moments, it's just a 3/5, but colour me intrigued, this was a pretty interesting listen.

Partly cringe partly okay

This is an indie folk band? I'd hardly call it indie folk at times. More like dramatic musical theatre. I agree with the other comments saying this is a musical. That's what makes it give off trying too hard vibes. It sounds forced. Like those little spoken word things sound so fake and inauthentic. It's hard to describe why but it just does. My personal rating: 3/5 My rating relative to the list: 3/5 Should this have been included on the original list? No.

Really not my thing- I respect the attempt (folky-theatrical fey ballads) but it's pretty false and contrived.

Folk music for theatre kids (not derogatory). This was quite fun - it got a bit predictable after a while, with a lot of songs going for the same reverb-heavy slow build bodhran-bashing songs that people would have described as epic about 10 years ago. Still a nice listen though, and some fun lyrics varying between a real high fantasy vibe to just some modern day nerds playing D&D and talking about their lives

Curious mix of styles, not bad

This sounds like a West End musical soundtrack. It Alt-Rock-Folk with a dramatic essence. The nearest comparison I can think of is the Decemberists. A worthy but odd pick.

Ooh it's Jaskier! I shouldn't like this but the Witcher vibes made it quite enjoyable.

Well this was epic. I can't say I'd want to listen again but I do appreciate it. Would make a great soundtrack for the Witcher. Very earnest.

This whole thing sounds like "The Fairytale of New York" if it was produced by Hans Zimmer.

I quite liked it. But it swam in and out of enjoyment.

Demonstrates that theater kid indie folk and fantasy nerd power metal have some unexpected overlap in the venn diagram. This is really cheesy, and while cheesy can be really fun, they don't quite have the goods to pull it off successfully.

Indie folk. Agradable de escuchar, pero me pasa desapercibido. Y lo he escuchado varias, para ver si destacaba algo.

Did really do it for me.

Not really for me, I don't enjoy folk in any combination usually anyway. It's not bad though, some good vocal ranges they have. Produced well.

A bit of a surprise here. Didn't think it was for me, but about halfway through the album I changed my mind. The Calling and Blossoms are great tracks.

This is simply music for the theatrical people. This feels like something you would hear on an off off broadway show where you get a 10 minute introduction about the journey and how everything’s a metaphor for the new wave apartheid. Ok maybe that was a bit much but that’s exactly how this album is. It goes a bit further than the musical realm and brings performance too. If you’re into that then this is for you. 4.6/10

Interesting… not my style

A bit too overly-dramatic for me to file this under the best music genre of all time - "goofy medieval music". Also, this is going to be extremely specific, but it reminded me too much of music you'd find in Youtube compilations titled something like "Royalty Free Viking Music For Your D&D Campaign 10 Hours (No Ads)". 2/5, but a weird kind of 2/5, because I can tell that I would have absolutely loved it with some production tweaks.

Is this the first artist to not even have a wikipedia page? That's how obscure we're going, I respect it. I can't say I loved this, I'm only keeping one song, but I can't say it was bad either. Musically, pretty interesting variety. But I wasn't impressed. 2.5/5

When Mumford & Sons watched a bunch of Disney films and got obsessed with those earnest male & female ballads.

In the realm of epic "indie folk" from the British Isles, there's the visceral and layered renditions of immemorial traditional songs as performed by the young yet already seasoned bucks that Lankum are, and then there's the heavy-handed, Broadway musical-inspired, topsy-turvy stuff that the professional actors in this quite insipid project have released here. That duo is admittedly musically skilled, at least on a technical viewpoint. But artistically speaking, it seems to me they're out of their league. Sure, comparing two acts as different as Lankum and The Amazing Devil might be quite nonsensical. Maybe in the end, it's just a case of choosing the (amazing) devil you know. But I would never include the act who wrote, performed and released *Ruin* into my list of keepers. I certainly wouldn't sign them up with my blood, not to mention plain ink. Please listen to album *False Lankum*. If really you're into cinematic, quote-unquote, "folk music", you might be in for a treat. 2/5 for the purposes of this list of essential albums. 7/10 for more general purposes (5 + 2) Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ---- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 13 Albums from the users list I *might* select for mine later on: 17 Albums from the users list I won't select for mine: 35 (including this one)

I found this quite insufferable. Cringe. OTT. twee. Not good.

Sorry, but I just find this really cringey.

Was kind of hoping for more here, but it was mostly just inoffensive? Lots of songs feeling like they were on the verge of a religious montage backing track, but there was softer moments I enjoyed a bit more. The whole album kind of just exists, though.

Indie folk and west end musicals are not my thing so this is not my thing

Ruined my day

This is some privileged "artistic" nonsense. I can hear that it's being made by people who've never had to struggle or work a hard day in their lives. It's pissing me off to listen to someone with the leisure to live their dreams, even if those dreams are talentless drivel.

This definitely sounds like music that the guy from The Witcher would make, and not in a great way. The cover about sums up the vibe too. Just very cheesy over the top folk.