🎶 In Ruins
🌎Timisoara, Romania
📀 We Are All To Perish
® Meuse Music Records
📅 13/03/2026

Funeral Doom Metal is a very challenging genre for the average listener. It is entirely introspective, depressing, heavy, and oppressive, and the listener must be in a specific psychological and spiritual state to fully absorb it.

The Romanian band IN RUINS combines elements of their heritage, such as the grandeur of the Carpathians or the intense religious character of their country, and presents us with their first full-length album titled “We Are All To Perish.” From the title alone, one can easily grasp the album’s theme. Lyrically, they drew on poems by the Russian lyric poet Sergei Yesenin, who was one of the most popular Russian poets of the 20th century and died in a tragic yet striking manner at the age of just 30. On December 26, 1925, he slit his left wrist and used his blood to write his final poem, “Goodbye my friend, goodbye,” and the next day he hanged himself in the hotel where he was staying in Leningrad. This brief historical overview helps us understand the tragic personality of Esenin, who inspired IN RUINS.

The album consists of just 4 songs, each over 10 minutes long. Simple melodies, heavy and repetitive riffs, and agonizingly slow tempos create a suffocating atmosphere that can evoke in the listener either the longed-for catharsis or a feeling of depression. The result depends on each listener and how they cope with loss (whether real or theoretical) in their life. The fact that there are only 4 songs—and they’re quite long—means they should have more distinctive elements to stand out. Such elements include, for example, the female vocals in “We’ll Depart This World For Ever, Surely”, the spoken parts toward the end of the same song and the Orthodox Christian chants that dominate “Farewell.” Finally, Urmuz’s vocals—who, by the way, plays the guitars and bass on the album—are perfect for this particular album. Deep, haunting, steady…

“We Are All To Perish” is a typical example of Funeral Doom as we most often encounter it in Northern European countries, enriched with a few—perhaps rather few—distinctive elements. Nevertheless, it is worth your attention, as long as you listen with an open mind and, above all, an open soul.

★ 7/10
✍🏻 Kostas Boudoukos