You may know Rites To Ruin. Or you may not. The South Wales-based band formed around 2019 are about to release their debut album, Daughter Of Hatred, and having spent time with it over the past few days, I cannot wait to see the wider reaction of the Heavy Metal world.
Rites To Ruin feature vocalist Krissie Kirby, who fronted three-time Bloodstock Alumni Triaxis. Alongside Krissie, seasoned musicians bring the noise with guitarists Lee Cartner and Matt Chambers, bassist Paul Boschen and interim drummer Zak Skane who took over the skins when founding drummer Tom Ross had to stand down for family reasons.
I have known Krissie Kirby for several years, and it is always a joy to catch up with her. As we talk about house moves, new jobs, and brains being scrambled, it is like being back around the tents at Bloodstock, where we have spent many good times chatting away, except that our chairs are a lot more comfortable.
Krissie points out the boxes of merchandise that signal the forthcoming album launch as a sign of the chaos to come. Although Rites To Ruin released their EP Fire in 2021, it was 2015, ten years ago, when Triaxis released their third and final album, Zero Hour.
Krissie explains that all the same experiences have returned. “It feels odd,” she says of Zero Hour, “like it was only yesterday that it was released. This is putting on a pair of old slippers, but they are still no more comfortable than they were the last time. Yeah, I forgot how much goes into it.
“I definitely forgot how stressful it is. The rose tint goes over the memories, and you only really remember the fun bit. I really forgot how stressful it could be.”
But for all the stress, it is evident that the whole process has bonded the band even more. “I really loved how well everyone bounced off each other while making it,” Krissie says. “Matt has been our absolute rock for the entire process. He’s been in the studio with everybody. He’s been there, making sure everybody knows where they need to be and who they need to be with. He made sure that he got all the information from James, our producer, to give to the engineers that we’re doing the tracking.
“He’s been an absolute diamond. I think I probably would have had a major meltdown without him. Just the banter between him and Lee is hilarious, and then Zach is the baby-faced assassin. He looks quiet and unassuming. He looks like he’s really chilled.
“Then he will come out with the most delectable comeback that you’re not expecting, that just has you all in stitches. He’s a diamond. He’s actually dynamite, that boy. He’s brilliant. And Paul has been Paul. He’s been our grumpy old man.”
It is a different experience writing with four men, Krissie points out. In Triaxis, there were three girls (Claire Wilson and Becky Baldwin with KK) and two men. “Especially as we’ve got more of the bluesy tone than the Thrash tone,” Krissie says.
“CJ and Giles really had that Thrash element in and added it into the band [Triaxis]. And then Glyn [Williams] brought in that Power Metal side. Whereas I think with this group we’ve got so many disparate influences that we’ve found this nice bluesy edge. Lee brings a lot of that in with his influences from Gary Moore, etc.”
It is a great point for some of Lee’s guitar work on Daughter Of Hatred is superb. When you listen to the album, I point out that it actually finishes as strong as it starts, and Sorrow is what I feel is a hidden gem on the album. We come back to that later.
Anyone who knows Krissie Kirby knows that she is a very driven person. Was this album always going to come out? “Oh yeah,” she says. “2025, the album was happening. We promised it in 2022, but it didn’t happen, and we got close to really sorting things and getting things together in 2023.
“Then Tom’s wife fell really ill, and we kind of slowed things down a touch. Then, there was the arrival of the second sprog, which saw Tom step away from drumming for us and other things took priority. There’s important life shit going on now. You’ve got to just let that happen.
“We got to get something out now. It’s been four years since the last release. I want something out. So, we knuckled down, and we said, OK, we’ll put a stop on any gigs for the first half of the year, and we’ll see where we’re at and get some recording done. We were able to pick up gigging then in April which was cool.”
Krissie Kirby tells me that she writes most of the lyrics for the band, although “the boys will tweak things or suggest elements that they think would sound quite cool. For example, Reflections, which used to be our opener, the lyrics are completely different to what they were when you first heard in 2021. It’s a totally different set of lyrics and it’s a totally different lyric pattern.
“So that was one of those ones that we tried it. It kind of worked, wasn’t happy with it, went back to the drawing board, tried it again, put it out live. We finally got something we were all comfortable with.
“But the majority of the time, Matt or Lee will come up with a riff. They will go off and have a play date where they will sit down, and they will just jam and come up with some rough structure. They’ll give that to me to start playing around with melodies and lyrics, and then we’ll build on it from there.”
As I was thinking during the day about the interview, I was wondering what one word I would use to describe Rites To Ruin. That word was anthemic. “I wear my heart on my sleeve. Oh, I like that. I’ll take that,” Krissie says.
We move on to explore some of the lyrical themes, and I touch on For The Love Of Gold. It is evident that this is the nerdy side of the singer. “It’s balls out Dungeons and Dragons,” Krissie says. “Its working title was cheesy D&D.
“I said to the boys, I wanna write a cheesy fucking song that’s around Dungeons and Dragons, so we did”.
It was a surprise to me to find Fire And Rise from the EP included on the album. “Fire was always going to be on the album,” Krissie says. “When we released the EP, we always said that Fire would return and would be on the album, and we said that in a lot of our promo material.
“On Rise, Lee was never happy 100% with it. He thought he could do more with it. He wanted to do other things with it, like that beautiful complementary guitar that he’s put right in the beginning that follows some of the lyrical lines.
“But also, in the original, I didn’t do any harmonies on Rise, and I felt it sounded hollow because of it. So, I wanted to get more harmonies on it. We got to a point where we said let’s revisit Rise and redo it and make sure it’s the best thing we can possibly put out. And it closes the chapter in Fire nicely now.”
Rites To Ruin released Prevail a couple of weeks ago. It’s a feisty single accompanied by a cracking video. How has the reception been to the single?
“It’s not done badly,” Krissie Kirby says. “We’ve been promoting it as much as we can, but we are a very small band. But it’s gone well”. I think it’s Krissie’s precision singing that stands out on the track, and I remark that there are few vocalists so clear in their delivery. “I do like to enunciate, darling,” she laughs.
With the album wrapped up, the band were able to get a couple of gigs under the belt in April. Shows in Bristol, Birmingham and London. How did she feel they went?
“They went well,” she says. “London, I would have obviously liked to have had more people there, but it was a nice crowd. My D&D group turned up, so I dedicated For The Love Of Gold to them. I won’t tell you what their name is, because I don’t think you can print it.
“Birmingham was great. Birmingham was a really, really good gig, Atarka. Oh my God, they were good. Such a good band Amethyst as well. Beautiful, beautiful vocals in Amethyst. But Atarka, I would gig with them tomorrow.
“Bristol. I mean, the Black Lakes guys are lovely. They’re just adorable. And Gina [Hurley – Black Lakes manager] is just amazing. It was a good night in Bristol. It was warm, very sweaty in the basement.”
As release day draws near, Krissie Kirby tells me that she’s just waiting for the CDs to arrive, and then the packages will be ready. With Lee on holiday, there’s a final break before the band get back into the rehearsal room.
“We’ll do the final rehearsal for the album launch,” Krissie says, “and then I’ll go and purchase some cake.” She smiles. The promise of cake is always something to get me to a gig. Krissie reassures me. “There will be cake ’cause it’s Paul’s birthday on the night. And it’s Zack’s 30th on the Monday, so there must be cake.”
This is good news, although I’d seriously not have missed it for the world. Cake is literally the icing on the top. There’s never enough cake. “Exactly. Only a couple of people have picked up on my comment saying the cake is a lie”. [look it up, folks – just like I had to!]
With ticket sales healthy, it’s not too late to grab one for what promises to be an excellent evening.
After the album launch, we obviously have the big event. Krissie and Rites To Ruin will be playing Bloodstock on the EMP stage. This is a debut for Rites To Ruin but a fourth appearance for Krissie. “My fourth time at Bloodstock,” she says. “Still, the only stage I’ve not performed on is the Ronnie James Dio stage.” There is a sigh.
Turns out that there is no mystery about how the band got their slot. A simple phone call from Simon Hall asking if the band wanted to play the stage was all it took. “And about a nanosecond to say yes,” Krissie smiles.
Having been chided for missing the festival this year for the first time in 12 years, we note that there is a strong Welsh contingent at the festival in 2025. Ofnus, Helldown, Rites To Ruin, the winner of the M2TM final and others neither of us can name at the time.
So, what does the rest of the year look like for Rites To Ruin? “Well, if I can get venues to respond to my emails, then there should be Act 2 of the Daughter Of Hatred tour, which Bloodstock is technically the first date of. It will culminate on a gig in the bunkhouse on 13 December for my 50th.”
Hopefully, there are a few more chances to see this powerhouse of a band in action in 2025.
As is my want, I jump back to a question that slipped my mind earlier. The band have offered a number of merchandise packages to support the album release. It has been a while since they have had to think about that, so how easy was it to get back to that, and what did they want to offer?
“It didn’t really take that much because I kept all our spreadsheets from The Zero Hour album pledge and the launch that we did,” Krissie says. “So, for Fire, I just adapted them and then kept them. I kept a master version of that, which I’m now just going to rinse and repeat with everything.
“But it was looking at what can we do that’s slightly different. So instead of just a pack of badges and stuff, and because I’m a pin badge collector, we do proper pin badges. Then Matt was like, well, I want a patch. So, let’s get a patch, and then we all wear beanies. So, the beanies arrived today.
“It’s just a case of, well, as music fans, what would we buy in a merch store? And that’s always the way we approach picking merch. What would we buy? This is why there was the option of a notebook because I’m a massive stationary nerd. So, there was an option for an A5 Rites To Ruin embossed notebook. The only person who bought one was me.”
Whilst the album is full of cracking songs, I ask Krissie which ones are her favourites. “There’s a couple,” she says. “In Memoriam has a very special meaning for me because it’s dedicated to a dear friend that we lost.
“I looked at Tennyson’s In Memoriam poem and the fact that it had the line, ‘I will see you in the stars and look for you in the dying of the sun.’ I knew that line would mean a lot, so I had to put that in there. That’s a very special and very emotive song for me, to the point that I really had to gee myself up in the studio to sing it because I knew I was going to fall apart.
“We also haven’t played Sorrow live yet, and I can’t wait to do that because it is a bit of a love letter song that one. There’s an obvious nod in it. Paul wasn’t fussed at the beginning. He felt it was a bit more mainstream than the rest of the album, and the solo comes in so early.
“I could hear the melody straight away, and I was like, okay, I know where I’m going with this. It’s got a Maiden vibe in places. It goes into that beautiful, fast-paced piece, and then it slows back down. My love letter to Maiden and Bowie, definitely, and I can’t wait to sing it live. It’s the only song I’ve ever put down on record that really shows off my three octaves.”
Let’s see if Krissie Kirby can do the vocal acrobatics live. She is not known as a powerhouse vocalist for nothing. “Matt was actually in the vocal booth with me when I was doing that,” she says, “and he said he wished he’d worn earplugs because I was so loud.”
Rites To Ruin release Daughter Of Hatred on 30 June 2025 on all major platforms with pre-orders from www.ritestoruin.co.uk. The band play Fuel Rock Club in Cardiff on 29 June and the EMP stage at Bloodstock Festival on Saturday 9 August.
