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From the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

Ruin

The Amazing Devil

2021

Ruin
Album Summary

This album has been submitted by a user and is not included in any edition of the book.

Batey is a vocalist and musician for the indie folk band The Amazing Devil, as well as the primary writer and composer. He and collaborator Madeleine Hyland met while acting for the Royal Shakespeare Company and together they formed the band in 2015, producing what Batey has described as music that β€œsad people can listen to at train stations.” The band has released three albums including Love Run (2016), and The Horror and the Wild (2020). Their most recent album, Ruin, was released on 31 October 2021.

Wikipedia

Rating

2.98

Votes

121

Genres

  • Rock
  • Folk

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Reviews

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Nov 04 2024
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5

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!

πŸ‘
Nov 04 2024
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5

'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"

πŸ‘
Nov 04 2024
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1

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.

πŸ‘
Nov 04 2024
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4

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.

πŸ‘
Nov 04 2024
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4

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

πŸ‘
Nov 04 2024
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3

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.

πŸ‘
Nov 04 2024
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3

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

πŸ‘
Nov 04 2024
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3

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.

πŸ‘
Jan 29 2025
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2

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.

πŸ‘
Nov 04 2024
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1

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.

πŸ‘
Nov 05 2024
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5

Wow! Fun and occasionally epic

πŸ‘
Jan 16 2025
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5

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!

πŸ‘
Apr 04 2025
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5

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!

πŸ‘
Nov 07 2024
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4

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

πŸ‘
Nov 25 2024
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4

Indie folk. Me ha gustado. Un 4.

πŸ‘
Dec 07 2024
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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.

πŸ‘
Dec 13 2024
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4

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

πŸ‘
Mar 07 2025
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4

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.

πŸ‘
Mar 09 2025
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4

Fun light airy renaissance faire vibes. Very cool

πŸ‘
Mar 29 2025
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4

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

πŸ‘
Nov 04 2024
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3

"'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.

πŸ‘
Nov 05 2024
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3

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

πŸ‘
Nov 06 2024
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3

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

πŸ‘
Nov 14 2024
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3

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

πŸ‘
Dec 07 2024
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3

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

πŸ‘
Dec 14 2024
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3

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

πŸ‘
Jan 22 2025
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3

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.

πŸ‘
Jan 24 2025
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3

Folksy blues for the theater-nerd set.

πŸ‘
Jan 24 2025
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3

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

πŸ‘
Feb 01 2025
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3

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

πŸ‘
Feb 14 2025
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3

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.

πŸ‘
Mar 23 2025
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3

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.

πŸ‘
Apr 02 2025
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3

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

πŸ‘
Apr 03 2025
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3

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

πŸ‘
Nov 05 2024
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2

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

πŸ‘
Nov 10 2024
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2

Interesting… not my style

πŸ‘
Jan 29 2025
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2

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.

πŸ‘
Feb 01 2025
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2

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

πŸ‘