Rick: What is the primary philosophy behind My Ruin?

Tairrie: Bleed, sweat and go nuts. To Rock.

Mick: Breaking shit.

Tairrie: It’s just to rock, to do some good heavy music with honest lyrics.

Rick: What are the honest lyrics? Would you say that My Ruin is a feminist band?

Tairrie: No. 

Rick: What is feminism to you?

Tairrie: Feminism to me, I mean, I’m not a feminist I don’t think.  Well, I am and I’m not.  It’s a two part question.  Back in Manhole everybody said I was the complete feminist extreme with lyrics about pro-choice and women’s rights and all, but at the same time I never exclude men. I want to educate men.  I was really extreme back in the days with my lyrics, but I think the lyrics have moved in more to a relationship type vibe than talking about certain issues that involve women at the moment.  We talk about a lot of things.  We talk about the beauty myth and the way women are supposed to be perceived but men can relate to that as well.  The statistics that 36-24-36 is supposed to be the perfect woman’s body or anorexic now days.

Mick:  Those aren’t the measurements anymore.  Now it’s more like negative ten, negative twenty, negative ten.

Tairrie:  We definitely have songs like that with beauty fiend the image issue and cosmetic issue. 
We have two records and the first record, Speak and Destroy, My Ruin wasn’t really a band.  My Ruin was me with musicians that I got to write the record with me.  That record was written by a lot of different musicians.  People from Downset, people from my old band, a couple people from England, Melanie, and now the new record, A Prayer Under Pressure, was written by Mick and Meghan and I.

Rick: (asking Mick and Meghan) What do you guys think of the older stuff?

Mick: I like some of it.  I think it’s all good. 

Tairrie: I think it could’ve been produced a lot better.  Melanie’s shit is really cool too.

Meghan: It just doesn’t sound the same.  It’s really uneven.

Tairrie:  It’s because I didn’t have one producer or one studio.  I was working in four different places between England and here.  It left a little bit of an incohesive vibe which is to say, I think, if Nick were to have produced it and this current band playing it, the same songs it would have sounded way better even with all the different vibes it would sounded cool with one band.

Mick: But in a way all the different sounds works to its advantage too.  It’s a cool record.  There’s a lot of great moments on it and there’s a lot variety. 

Tairrie: It’s a collage.

Mick: For people who like a record where you really don’t know what to expect on the next track that’s the record.

Rick: (to Mick) How did you come to be in the new incarnation of My Ruin?

Mick: I just kind of tripped and fell right into it.  I met Tairrie and kind of accidentally hit it off.  We started talking about music.  I played her some of my old stuff.  She played me her old stuff. 

Rick: What were you in before?

Tairrie: He was in a band called Movement before and when I met him I was actually wondering about what I was going to do, who I still wanted to work with.  Because after touring with my old band who were all paid musicians except for Melanie who had written five of the songs on Speak and Destroy.  And even though she’s a really cool and a good guitar player she just wasn’t really in the realm…  I needed to get away from the Manhole/Tura Satana vibe.  I wanted to do something a little different.  I knew I could never do spoken word with Manhole and songs like Sycophant  I could never do with Manhole or Tura Satana. I wanted to try to do something different.  I think Melanie gave me the opportunity to be a little more ambient and different from what I was used to, just the typical screaming, heavy shit.  But then when it came down to doing it live, I wanted to do the heavy stuff live more.  Now, with the new band, Mick has brought in, as a guitar player, not only is he really heavy and comes up with incredible riffs, he can also do mellow shit and make it pretty, but it still sounds heavy.  I think Melanie was just very one sided.  She couldn’t write a song like Blasphemous Girl so it wasn’t quite right.  I needed a metal guitar player, but also somebody who could understand the other stuff.

Rick: Is metal the label you want for My Ruin?  If you had to choose?

Yael: It’s being called New Metal.

Rick: New metal?

(the interview tape is garbled here as everyone answers the question at once.  Tairrie eventually beats out the cacophony to be heard)

Tairrie:  I think of it as Rock.

Yael:  New metal that’s what I keep seeing.  I don’t know what they mean.

Tairrie: I don’t like that because new metal to me is what Static X is and what Spine Shank is and I don’t think we fit in that category.  I don’t think My Ruin fits in any category.

Yael: Straight up hard rock.

Mick: It’s like a cross between thrash, I mean there’s lots of screaming and it’s really crass, and its also got a seventies rock.

Tairrie: Somebody asked me, “When did My Ruin go stoner rock?” And asked, “What?” And then I understand what they mean.  Stoner rock with hard core vocals.

Mick: I think Meghan and I draw a lot of influences from the seventies.

Meghan: (makes fist) Kiss.
 

Mick: And we take it and do a modern version of that.

Tairrie: Where as I draw influences from male singers like Rollins and Phil from Pantera and Rob from Machine Head.  Those are where my vocal influences come from and then there’s the darker side would be the whole Nick Cave kind of thing.  There’s the mixture I try to do because I’m not really… I’m not a singer.

Rick: There’s a big difference in your fan base compared to  here and over in Europe, and you’re about to go tour  England.  You’ve never done a full scale American tour.  How come?

Tairrie:  Because the label in America sucks.  It’s called Spitfire Records.  They licensed the album through Snapper and I didn’t want it to go there.  There a label that has Ronnie James Dio and Alice Cooper.  Of course those bands are fine, they are what they are.  But for a band like this, they didn’t understand what the hell My Ruin were. They took the record the record and basically killed it right when it started because I wouldn’t go along with their bullshit propaganda and their lack of intelligently promoting the record. Period.

Mick:  Basically we got no support.

Tairrie: At all.  People think, “What’s My Ruin?  How come their not doing this and that?”  It’s not because we don’t want to. It’s because our fucking record, Speak and Destroy, was put on a shit label, Shitfire Records, and The Prayer record isn’t even out.  Hopefully, we’re going to get that licensed to another label that will know what do with it.  Put this band in America so that we can tour properly.  This band should be playing OzzFest.  This band should be doing all the things that people say, “Why aren’t you doing?”

Mick: It’s a constant up hill battle.

Tairrie: The show at the Whisky and the show at the Troubadour, those were great shows, but we feel bad when kids all over the world do chats with us and they’re like, “How come you can’t play Missouri?”  And we would love to but we have a label that’s a fucking piece of shit and they don’t know how to promote this band.

Mick: I think they don’t care.  They don’t care what they do with us.

Tairrie: They don’t realize what to do and we’re like, that’s cool, we’ll wait for somebody who does.

Mick: They’re just happy supporting their back catalog.  They don’t care about breaking something new.

Rick: So the difference in popularity between here, America, and there, Europe, is just because of the record label?