Review & Full Album Premiere: Ruff Majik, Moth Eater
Posted in audiObelisk, Reviews on October 3rd, 2024 by JJ Koczan
[Press play above to stream Ruff Majik’s Moth Eater in its entirety. Album is out tomorrow, Oct. 4, through SOL Records. The band are currently on tour in Europe with Gnome. Dates are here.]
Hail narrative, and double-hail the wielding of it. Ruff Majik‘s fifth album in six years, Moth Eater is also their first for the Sound of Liberation label arm SOL Records and it finds the South African four-piece — vocalist/guitarist Johni Holiday, guitarist/vocalist Cowboy Bez, bassist Jimmy Glass and drummer Steven “Boz Moon” Bosman — with grueling tales of underground debauchery, trials and triumphs, set to dizzying instrumentalist turns and full-rush party-vibe conjurations. To aid in the telling are guests like South Africa’s Reegan Du Buisson (Evergloom, Facing the Gallows) on opener “What a Time to Be a Knife,” and Lerato, who appears on the side B funk-fortified groover “Ingozi” (the Zulu word for “danger” as the lyric sheet notes), and Sweden’s Arvid Hällagård (Greenleaf, Young Acid, Pools), and an overarching structure that brings the sometimes disparate tracks together with transitional recordings of voicemails that are mostly funny and no doubt have their foundations in stories too.
Because make no mistake, even though the songs are short, shove-prone, and fun, what’s happening on Moth Eater — which is not-coincidentally subtitled ‘The Lorekeeper’s Bible’ — is nothing less than Ruff Majik realizing the power of and taking control of their narrative. “Dirt and Deer Blood?” Oh that’s a story. The angry voicemail before the drums start opener “What a Time to Be a Knife” that ends with the threat, “I’ll make sure you never play another show in this town, bru!” as if the band’s intentions were so limited to a single city? That’s a story too. “Wasted Youth?” Come on. That’s a drinking song. Of course it’s a story.
You get the idea. The story is story. This is consistent in some ways with the last two, also stellar, Ruff Majik full-lengths, 2020’s The Devil’s Cattle (review here), where they learned genre was a tool to be manipulated, and more especially 2023’s Elektrik Ram (review here), with which much of Moth Eater is in conversation, sometimes directly, as in the voicemail from the CEO of Riffcom as played by Paul Gioia (All This for Nothing), who congratulates ‘Wilkinson’ on a job well done after the brainmelting percussive thrust of early cut “By the Hammer,” following up on a similarly charming gag from the last record, and sometimes indirectly, as in the way “What a Time to Be a Knife” middle-fingers-up rages in the spirit of Elektrik Ram‘s opener “Hillbilly Fight Song” or “All You Need is Speed” from The Devil’s Cattle, or even the fact that the last line of the closing title-track on Moth Eater is “I feel fine,” where Elektrik Ram wrapped with, “I wish I was dead.”
That that choice feels purposeful at all — and it does — is emblematic of Ruff Majik‘s attention to detail, but one doesn’t have to dig even so far to find that. It’s audible in the multi-layered vocal arrangements throughout, with Holiday‘s voice pushed low on “We’re Not Out of the Swamp Yet” and at its most Axl Rose-esque in “Wasted Youth,” or instrumentally, in the way Glass‘ bassline matches the vocal thoughtfully in the otherwise frenetic “By the Hammer” — which is so much of a story it’s mythology — for the lines, “Oh, and the blood it would stain her pretty white dress/Oh, if Odin wills, she’ll have their heads,” or the manner in which “Cult Eyes” finds itself in a mid-tempo bluesy swagger so suited to the Holiday/Hällagård duet that tops it, or how “Baby’s First Guillotine” moves from its perhaps ill-advised opening voicemail — a German-accented guy talking in a lisped voice about the band shaking their asses resolving in the punchline, “that’s what’s fappening”; I’m sure there’s a story there, too, but it could be taken as a little ha-ha-queerness-is-funny-because-it’s-different-from-me in a way that’s probably more sixth-grade than the band intended — into self-titled-era Alice in Chains-style pulls of guitar in its tension-releasing chorus.
Such persistent self-awareness and generally intelligent structured craft and lyrics are not anchors holding the band back. Instead, as much as it’s a party on the surface, depth abounds in a lyrical reference like “I’m killing snakes/Call me Patrick” in “What a Time to Be a Knife” — subtly namedropping the patron saint of Ireland — and the last lyrics, “Oh Mary, you should’ve seen me in my prime/I could’ve made it, I just didn’t have the time” from the maddeningly catchy “Battering Lamb,” which is a highlight examining the life of a band trying to exist in the current underground sphere, its own chorus, “And I’ve won some/But I’ve lost some too/I’ve been told it’s all part of the game/And I’ve burned through/A stack or two/I’ve been told money ain’t no thang,” encapsulating the experience from inside a nebulous idea of what ‘making it’ means in the first place when the rewards are often intangible at best. That the voicemail accompanying “Battering Lam” at the start and finish is a desperate fan who “needs the fuzz in my life” and “needs some Majik” as though addicted to it should not be taken as a coincidence. Clearly among the things Ruff Majik know about themselves is they know when they’re on fire.
Much of Moth Eater is spent in that very state. To wit, as “Dirt and Deer Blood” shifts from its opening sample of a longwinded tour manager/driver into its verse, Ruff Majik have by then amassed enough capital in attitude to sell the bridge lines, “Y’all don’t even know who the fuck I think I am,” and “Y’all keep playing preacher and I’ll keep getting lit,” without sounding ridiculous. No minor accomplishment, and the song itself is likewise a burner. Sound of Liberation‘s Matte Vandeven (also My Sleeping Karma and The Great Escape) offers some noncommittal compliments after “Baby’s First Guillotine,” and the joke is that the band are killing it. Broadly speaking, the songs don’t make efficiency the top priority in a way that Elektrik Ram often did, and that’s something you can hear even when “What a Time to Be a Knife” kicks back in after a stop that, on the record before, would’ve just been its cold ending. The tradeoff for that immediacy is the material here does more. In that song, for example, the final section rides a more open groove and turns well-timed repetitions of “Get fucked!” into a memorable impression that defines in part the point of view of everything that follows. It enhances the story Ruff Majik are telling, and story is the priority.
A singalong finish for “Wasted Youth” — “Now all I’ve got left is wasted youth/And all I have is half of the truth/I said I never felt lonely/Until I met you/Until I met you…” — gives over (without a sample between) to the title-track, which establishes acoustic guitar early and trades off into a fervent push echoing “By the Hammer” as much as the quieter parts and lyrics complement Elektrik Ram‘s previously-alluded-to “Chemically Humanized.” Decidedly, willfully more lighthearted, “Moth Eater” caps the LP that shares its name with the punchline for all the voicemails spread across its span with a simple deleting of messages. It’s a little awkward after the very-much-an-ending way “Moth Eater” rounds out, but if they were going to conclude that thread at all — and they were, because storytelling — that’s a fair enough way to do it, reinforcing the attitude underlying the songs front-to-back and underscoring the band’s intention to do their own thing in their own way, even if it means they’ll never get another show in this town again, whatever town this may be.
There is a particular element of glee as Ruff Majik dash from part to part, righteous in their us-against-reality cause and assured by a strength of songwriting that makes the song likewise casual-cool and roilingly infectious, and if Elektrik Ram was staring into the abyss, Moth Eater is perhaps throwing the abyss in the van and hitting the road alongside it in buddy-comedy fashion. It is undeniably Ruff Majik‘s own in persona and execution, and even if the trilogy that began in The Devil’s Cattle is done — which it may or may not be — the band thankfully show no signs of letting up anytime soon. May their next round of adventures also result in such a broad swath of stories recounted.
Ruff Majik, “Wasted Youth” lyric video
Ruff Majik, “Cult Eyes” official video
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