Ruled By Raptors – A Shadow That Never Moves
Ruled By Raptors – A Shadow That Never Moves
Self Release
Release date: 02/10/26
Review by Jon Deaux
7/10
Nothing’s ever been sorted out with a guitar but you can get the debris sounding like it mattered and these kids know that.
Ruled By Raptors are a post-hardcore band from Britain, so of course I’d heard this record before I listened to it. 2004, then 2011, then last Tuesday when they played support for a band whose name escaped my mind during their soundcheck. “Sharp” and “emotionally charged” have been applied to so many bands now they have the same feel as a pint left out at a Wetherspoons.
Chris Bradley’s mother spent six months in hospital during the creation of this mini album, and they got it finished anyway. I haven’t even managed to go to the dentist without feeling sorry for myself for a week.
“Dūcere” kicks things off with a doom riff that was initially written as a joke, and the band would play it whenever Chris left the rehearsal room. This time it’s got a Latin name. Every band has a kid who wanders off in the middle of the song, and this one has got a fucking overture out of it. “Fiends” are for people with strong political opinions and no sense to ever cast a vote. Synths and reese basses have been thrown in to increase the bile factor and it works. Screaming at cowards goes down easier on a floor that moves.
“Sleep Dep.” tackles insomnia and having to resent your wife for falling asleep in four minutes. It nods to Enter Shikari and contains a lot of influences from Reuben and Hell Is For Heroes in its bloodline. This is the single, of course, because it sounds most like bands people already loved. “Rescissory” is based on the toddler who washed up on a British beach and the politicians and newspapers who fed well off the story. I expected a joke here because it’s become a habit, but there isn’t one. Bands with much bigger budgets have been dancing around this topic for decades, and these boys just marched right through it.
The next songs are personal, and this is one of the traits of this kind of music I’ve never outgrown despite all this time, and I’m ashamed of it. “Mancunian Japanese” is a song about a man struggling with self-confidence after touring with MC Lars and working with Romesh Dodangoda, and this confidence problem wasn’t bothered with the difference. He almost gave up music. “Static Collapse” is burnout and quiet evenings spent inside and a couple of drinks turning into more than a couple of drinks. And the song is what he has written when he has realised what’s going on. It beats most of the self-help records offered at merch tables. “Algebra (I’m On A Rage)” throws a riff taken from some lockdown indie single right into the faces of gaslighters. Best title on this record, and nobody ever stopped raging because somebody told him to.
“Ad Infinitum” is a phone recording of a riff that is several years old. It was found somewhere in Dropbox, put on a loop, and sent back to the beginning. The process of creating the song could be accurately described as four guys forever throwing half-baked ideas at each other via WhatsApp at 2 o’clock in the morning.
My complaint is the usual one: all this therapy, politics and in-joking starts to become a support group with a particularly loud PA and I’ve been to that gig. But they sound themselves without being stuck in a box, and after twenty years of watching people confuse a genre with a personality, I’ll take that.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Ducere
02. Fiends
03. Sleep Dep
04. Rescissory
05. Mancunian Japanese
06. Static Collapse
07. Algebra (I’m On A Rage)
08. Ad Infinitum
LINKS:
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