The driving drum and clatter introduction of Ruleth reminds me of the urban gothic subcultural, best brought to American audience through old John Carpenter films and the work of Xander Harris. It’s a genre littered with posed moments of horror and anxiety but somehow ssleeperhold make it a positive experience rather than a nightmarish chase in which we run slower and slower until the clock or a palpitation wakes us. The 70s and 80s are all over Ruleth—but not in the Big Bang Boom of tossed aside demographic catering. This rings of a lost childhood, one where Freddy Krueger is the hero, eliminating the youthful minds of treasonous, doubting children in a world that needs optimism. It’s a happy grim, where there is no moral or fleshy decay, just a horror figure (pick your favorite) doing what is right to correct the course of a planet tilting toward disaster. We could have eliminated big hair caused by chlorofluorocarbons in hair spray. We could have stifled the industrial military complex. We could have seen Weekend at Bernie’s as the early battle cry in support of reanimation. ssleeperhold is all of that wrapped up in a Sandman’s worth of crusty eye flakes. The world could have been better had we only picked up a machete of love and whacked away the weeds of [Andrew] McCarthyism 20 years ago.
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