The sound of the music is the important thing. I can't understand it when people rip on entertainers like Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears because of their musical ineptitude. "They don't write songs," high-minded critics whine, "and they can't even play an instrument!" So what? Neither could Elvis! Kenny G, on the other hand, has mastered saxophone technique and writes all his own music. Does this mean we're supposed to prefer Kenny's "Songbird" to Aguilera's "Genie in a Bottle"? Hell, no! The only question to ask is: how does it sound?

In a similar vein, whenever someone tries to sell me on a piece of music by pointing out how difficult it is to play (what I call "The Pat Metheny Syndrome"), that's when I reach for my eject button. I couldn't care less if artists I like have good drummers or guitarists, and I can't recall ever dismissing a band because "the [insert instrument here] player sucks." If instrumental skill were all that mattered, Toto, a band of top-flight session musicians, would have long ago conquered the world. How does it sound?!

This brings us to the Ruins. If in most cases the last thing I care about when I listen to a record is the skill of the musicians performing it, I also have to admit that instrumental prowess can be so tied into the music itself that it can't be ignored. If you're not familiar with the Ruins, they're a two-piece Japanese band consisting of drummer/singer Tatsuya Yoshida and a rotating cast of bassists (Ryuichi Masuda plays on the reissued 1992 album Burning Stone). As bizarre as it sounds, they play hyper-athletic prog-rock viewed from the vantage point of hardcore, like King Crimson meets Suicidal Tendencies. And their chops are insane. Indeed, over-the-top instrumental skill is the bedrock of the Ruins' sound, and a powerful sound it is.

Yoshida is all over his kit on Burning Stone, going from zero to 60 (and back to zero) in a split second. After a while, the sound of his sticks hitting every skin in sight with such unbelievable precision becomes pure texture, and his technique is half of what makes the music so fun. The other half comes from bassist Masuda, who negotiates the hairpin stop/start maneuvers perfectly while layering melodic noise on top, coaxing an extremely wide range of sounds from his five-string bass-- sounds you would never associate with the instrument. Every track undergoes several transitions from heavy riff to hurried bridge to slowed-down chorus, with the two instrumentalists locked together flawlessly throughout.

Yoshida's manic vocals, which bear the unmistakable stamp of mid-70's prog, will be the wildcard for most rock fans. His screechy melodies are straight out of the early Rush songbook (think 2112, not Moving Pictures), with complicated, operatic passages you can't help but laugh at. But that's cool, because it's clear that the Ruins are in on the joke. They know how strange it is to hear two Japanese guys interpreting hardcore prog (Yoshida sings most of the lyrics in a nonsensical language) and they play up the absurdity at every turn. But they never fail to take the playing or structure of the tunes seriously.

Burning Stone is more produced than other albums in the Ruins' catalog (you know you're an intense band when your "slick" record comes out on Shimmy-Disc), which sometimes diminishes the impact slightly, but nowhere will you hear the spastic instruments in more detail. So, then, how does it sound? Fucking good.

-Mark Richard-San