Review by Dominik on April 19, 2025.

Well, I still have no clue what “Scrüda” means—it could be a forgotten Eastern European dish, a brand of Soviet-era power tools, or something you shout when you stub your toe. But I now know exactly what Fury Among Ruins stands for. It's fury. Among ruins. My ruins, mostly. Inner ear damage, destroyed attention span, mild existential crisis—all in under 20 minutes. That's the short version. Now for the longer one.

The dudes of Scrüda hail from Poland, and for a change, we are not treated to another piece of putrid black metal meat. The band doesn't show up carrying a corpse painted pig's head and a USB stick full of Darkthrone worship. The genre tags say black, thrash, and speed metal. While all these influences are there, mostly buried deep, you’ll find two very different and much dirtier influences showing up: a very strong crust / d-beat vibe and, in spirit but not sound, Napalm Death. Not so much because Scrüda sounds like the British grindcore giants, but because the band uses two vocalists. The frontman delivering a devastating growling performance, sounding like a grizzly bear on withdrawal or someone gargling battery acid for fun, whereas guitarist Firecracker in places adds a completely different vocal pitch, screaming and yelling like someone locked in a meat freezer, what serves as a nice contrast to the deep throat menace of his colleague. Together, they form a glorious mess of vocal schizophrenia that somehow works.

As expected, this is not an album where you’ll find nuance, atmosphere, or anything remotely resembling restraint. Subtlety? Deleted. Permanently. Fury Among Ruins gives us 10 tracks in 18 minutes, and you’ll be reaching for the Aspirin bottle before it’s even halfway through. The opener 'Philosophy' introduces their philosophy quite clearly: a barrage of down tuned guitars, a pumping bass, furious, but simple drumming, and vocals bordering on death metal, but with this pissed off hardcore tinge, hit your eardrums and blast you into submission. Before you have time to recover, 'Lone Duelist' and the delightfully idiotic 'Ape From Hell' give you the band’s idea of mercy: musically it's the same intensity, but now with more vocal dynamics. Firecracker’s higher screams and attempts to “sing” offer some contrast, if not relief. It’s still a musical slap in the face—just with the vocals change between caressing your ear and ripping through your auditory passage with a vengeance.

'Kill' opens like a demon from the last Driller Killer album crashing through your living room wall, only to slow things down into a lurching, monotonous chorus, delivered as a duet between the band’s two lunatics. There’s something vaguely hypnotic about it—if you’ve ever been hypnotized by someone screaming at you on the bus. 'Bonded By Hate', perhaps not-so-coincidentally named in parts after Exodus’s most iconic album, brings in the record’s most overtly “metal” moment. For 1 ½ minutes, the guitars actually thrash here—wild, raw, and welcome. But don’t get too comfortable. 'Vile Alliance' quickly drags us back to crusty intensity, and the closer 'When A World Ended' nods briefly to Bolt Thrower (yep, there’s some death-doom riffs flirting in there too), before sort of wobbling to an unspectacular but forgivable finish.

In short, Poland spits out another solid slab of aggression that shows that there are bands willing to start occupying other sub-genres' territories as well. Fury Among Ruins is short, savage, and fun in a “someone just keyed my car but at least they spelled my name right” kind of way. It’s 18 minutes of glorious punishment, the kind that makes you hit repeat faster than I skipping a YouTube ad from yet another guy trying to sell me passive income or a deranged president trying to talk me into acquiring $TRUMP. Let’s just hope next time Scrüda gives us a full-length that’s long enough to qualify as one.

Rating: 8.1 out of 10, because for once, tinnitus came with a sense of satisfaction.