Million Dead - A Song To Ruin (Deluxe Edition) Album Review

Review of Million Dead's album A Song To Ruin (Deluxe Edition)

Coming packaged beautifully in a hardcover book with lyrics, photos and a DVD, you'd be hard pressed to dispute the love that's gone into this reissue. Such is the fan service across the lavish extended re-release that anybody who is even remotely into the band should buy this, for the 5 bonus tracks, for the electric last ever London show on the DVD, but really for what it represents: a somewhat brilliant yet short lived hardcore band immortalised in audio, print and video. It's a physical manifestation, that's the important thing, in a time where a press of the delete key can permanently erase whole libraries of music.

The music is as timeless and powerful as it ever was. Frank Turner's desperate vocal delivery and staccato political commentary transcends the regular 'we hate the government, innit' made to sell records and the instrumentation is forceful yet varied enough that the original album plus the bonus tracks don't outstay their welcome; a challenge for most modern hardcore bands. I love hardcore music in any guise, unashamedly- I force people to listen to it when I'm drunk, it's constantly on in my house. Million Dead's reissue should do just wonderfully, and it should make a few genre converts on the way.

Conrad Hughes