A big, enveloping sound. That was my first impression upon listening to the new IDE RUIN EP; the first song, "Whipped to Death", starts with a grandiose and awesome intro before launching into the kind of frantic riffs and speed you would expect from that song title. There's tremolo picking, double bass pounding, and a surprising sense of melody enough to satisfy die-hard thrash fans but also those appreciative of less extreme extreme metal. The vocals here fit the music very well; the low rasps underscore the energy and ferocity of a band just showing its teeth to the world.

"Spiritual Contagion" is a continuation of the high-energy style IDLE RUIN peddles. The galloping chug of the guitars is guaranteed to get blood boiling, and has been ever since IRON MAIDEN unleashed it on the world. Here, it is accented with fleeting and deftly executed tremolo passages, and the percussive assault on top drives everything toward a fever pitch. The song flies between this approach and classic pedal-tone riffs with enough regularity to be anticipated and enough spontaneity to be interesting. This EP definitely has a musical wheelhouse; "The Devil's Trade" features similar kinds of riffing and familiar drum patterns, although it does sound like more of an homage to classic SPEED METAL than the other songs on the EP with the low E chugs punctuated by power chord stabs and the longer guitar solo. There is even a small drum-only fill before a big ending chorus filled with gang-chanted vocals, a blatant nod to the old school of metal.

"Gods of Glass" brings us back to the territory tread by "Whipped to Death" and "Spiritual Contagion" with blazing tremolo picked lines woven between thrashy chugs and gallops. There is a breakdown about two minutes in signaled by a burst of harmonics that is a breath of fresh air and an excellent tension build, leading into an interestingly phrased and eerie-sounding solo (part of its character comes from the guitar tone itself, which is whispery and ghostlike). "Gods of Glass" definitely has more ambient moments, as almost the whole last minute of the song proves. It is a stomping, simple groove with evil-sounding chants on top, repetitive and sinister because of that repetition. Idle Ruin is a hard-hitting and succinct EP that showed hints of a band able to use many facets of metal in their work (the thrash of the first half, classic SPEED METAL of "The Devil's Trade" and the ponderous gloom of "Gods of Glass") and the band itself is one I will look forward to more releases from.