Review of The Ruins of Beverast's Song 'Anchoress in Furs', by Gyunders.

 Band: The Ruins of Beverast

Album: The Thule Grimoires

Song: Anchoress in Furs

The Ruins of Beverast seem to be extending their tribal-ish sound and better production, reminiscent of 2017’s “Exuvia”, and that’s a good thing. The song starts out familiarly to anyone that knows The Ruins of Beverast. It has some ancient-sounding chants with mid-tempo riffing and drumming behind it. The song kicks it up a beat with some of the best clean sounding vocals from Alexander von Meilenwald across all of his discography. While the clean vocals don’t seem to be pitch-perfect to my wildly inaccurate pitched ears, I personally have never cared about that in metal; these imperfect clean vocals leave a very eerie sound and really add to the atmosphere of the track. Speaking of atmosphere, the whole track is oozing with it. If you were trekking deep into a cavern and stumbled across some ancient ritual being conducted, these are the sounds that would be emitted.

Something in this track (and the first single from “The Thule Grimoires”) that strays from typical The Ruins of Beverast is that this seems to have a somewhat gothic element to it. You can hear plenty of goth rock/metal riffing throughout the album and the interjection of the clean and harsh vocals helps with that feel. I can see this factor being the splitting point among fans, but I believe it adds to the feel of the song.

Wrapping up the song, of course, is a tried-and-true method for The Ruins of Beverast, ending with some mysterious sample that will have fans pillaging the internet to figure out the meaning. My takeaway is: don’t bother, since Alexander von Meilenwald has said himself he chooses samples that just add to the atmosphere by the way they sound, not necessarily the meaning of the words in the language being spoken.

All in all, I think this is a very solid track. The atmosphere and ambiance is there, which is what I want most in a The Ruins of Beverast release. The tribal sound has come back from “Exuvia”, with an injection of gothic inspiration. The big cavernous sound surrounds you like a cloud and lingers like a cold shroud. If the rest of the album follows this song, I think it will be a very solid release.

I give “Anchoress in Furs” a 4/5

Review Done By Gyunders.