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A YouTube add of a Poison Ruïn dwell set in Queens describes the band as “sound[ing] like they reside and rehearse in a dark medieval dungeon.” Not fairly — the band was born in a Philadelphia warehouse basement rehearsal area — however that sound could be very deliberate. Frontman Mac Kennedy, who initially conceived the band as his personal recording mission, is one thing of a historical past and fantasy style fanatic. Across their discography, together with on their new sophomore album Härvest, the band pairs the imagery of that world with murky, soiled anarcho-punk. It’s not escapism, however the reverse — laying naked the throughline of brutality and oppression from the Dark Ages to our fashionable life.
“The idea was that I wanted to have a project that had a wide range of sound, but therefore needed something to unify it,” says Kennedy, talking from dwelling alongside drummer and roommate Allen Chapman. “I was trying to figure out some kind of symbolism or overarching idea that could tie everything together — musically, lyrically, and with the [visual] art.”
Grim new single “Torture Chamber” is among the album’s easiest and best songs. Kennedy’s vocals are gruff and gnarled as he barks: “Trapped in the torture chamber/ Tightened chain/ Suffering.” The album’s title monitor makes use of the thought of a peasant revolt to talk to fashionable class wrestle and revolution; “Tome Of Illusion” examines the development and exploitation of faith; “Blighted Quarter” is in regards to the hope and resistance that may shine via in communities left to endure — and whereas the discuss of non-arable land and carrion and vultures is in keeping with the medieval theme, the message beneath it was impressed by very actual components of contemporary Philadelphia.
“We’re sold a lie of linear advancement or progression through time, which is just fundamentally untrue,” Kennedy says. “We look at [medieval] times as symbols of brutality and toiling and daily struggle; people turning to religion or intangible things as a way to cope or carry through. And all of those things are as present and constant in everyone I know’s daily lives as whatever peasant with a hood on is being imagined.”
Kennedy grew up in small-town Maryland, the place regardless of the proximity to Baltimore and DC there was little in the best way of a punk or arts scene. “Not to say there aren’t small towns that have great music scenes, but ours was very tentative — if one person was doing stuff and then sorta dropped out it would dry up and disappear,” he says. Instead, he discovered about punk rock via documentaries and liner notes, and his first awakening to leftist politics was within the lyrics of Dead Kennedys data.
Meanwhile, Chapman comes from Binghamton, New York, the place he liked Metallica and the Ramones, and from there found bands just like the Misfits and Discharge. His personal politics began at dwelling — “My dad would get wasted and just rave about how much he fucking hated George Bush” — and had been bolstered when some older associates from college launched him to the idea of a DIY scene.
Both of them ended up in Philly by their early 20s, drawn to the thriving music scene and low cost hire. Poison Ruïn started initially of the pandemic, when Kennedy lastly discovered the time to flesh out among the musical concepts he’d been kicking round, leading to the mission’s debut EP, recorded in March 2020 and launched the next month. When his associates in Philly heard the demos, they had been excited sufficient to ask to be within the band — the lineup is accomplished by guitarist Nao Demand and bassist Will McAndrew. “We started practicing in probably September or October of 2020, and this wasn’t even necessarily with the intention of being a band,” says Kennedy. “I think we all quietly aspired and hoped to do that, but it wasn’t a time of particularly wanting to make optimistic predictions about the future or what you were gonna do with your time.”
Their first gig was a car parking zone profit present in July 2021. “I’ve never been so ready for a first show in my entire life. We were coming together twice a week and practicing a lot for 10, 11 months before we played our first show,” says Chapman. After that, excited whispers in regards to the band unfold past Philly, they usually began to tour additional afield, together with hitting the West Coast. Part of the attraction was their forceful and driving dwell present. “I feel like when you’re really present with live music, a lot of the time it has to do with the band just being really on the edge of what they’re doing, just pushing as far as energy, so we were trying to do that,” says Kennedy. “Some bands it’s like headphones and extra people strumming and just really trying to recreate a recording, and that was not the interest. We prioritize just allowing the live band to be its own thing.”
Härvest, the primary assortment of songs written as a full band, was recorded and blended completely by Kennedy (mastering was by Power Trip and Xibalba collaborator Arthur Rizk). It introduced out some perfectionist tendencies, he says. “It took a long time to mix it because I was definitely more self-aware this time. I think Allen remembers one time — we live in the same house, and our bedrooms are just on either ends of a hallway. I walked down the hallway, I was practically in tears, and I was like, ‘Dude, I feel like I need to start this whole thing over. I’m going insane.’ And I didn’t, I just saw it through. [But] when you’re making a follow-up to something, there’s a little more sweating.” The sound he ended up with is so lo-fi it’s virtually suffocating, emphasizing the picture of a darkish and brutal actuality because it obscures and chokes the explosive instrumentals. “I think it gives it this quality where it’s kind of like an artifact. It’s like listening to recordings that feel like they’re lost,” he says.
From the sonics to the album paintings — a chainmail-clad peasant holding a scythe, a peace-sign mace dangling from the band emblem — there’s a deliberate, holistic crafting of the band’s id. An thought of reclamation was necessary to the band, Kennedy says: “Most created worlds and things like that have a lot of ideology intentionally or unintentionally implanted in them. And part of that is trying to be aware and control that. This stuff does get used symbolically for extreme right type of stuff. And that’s just a no-brainer — provide the opposite, push back against it. If something can be taken on one side of a coin to say something, it implies the other side.”
“With the right wing stuff in extreme music, especially NSBM and stuff like that, there’s a lot of hidden dog-whistling within it too,” provides Chapman. “It’s just like, okay, there’s this little rune in the corner over here, is this the good rune or the bad rune? There’s a lot of cowardice in that. But I think aesthetically for [our] stuff, there’s no hiding anything — it’s like, here’s these known symbols for equality and peace and solidarity. It’s very within the text.”
“Yeah. Obviously those folks are irredeemable scumbag pieces of shit, but they’re also fucking losers. That’s nerdy garbage, we hate it,” says Kennedy.
There’s nothing too self-serious about Poison Ruïn; the theme they play with is enjoyable and a little bit foolish, they usually realize it. First and foremost, their music is an effective time. But the determined relevance of their political message is price heeding, if you can also make it out via the muck. “You think about revolution as a complete overthrow of an entire system,” says Chapman. “But thinking about the way that stuff starts … it’s not the knight in shining armor, not the member of the imperial court, not the one that’s knighted by the republic. It begins at the fields, because society doesn’t exist without somebody that tills the fields. And it’s pointing the focus at that type of solidarity. It’s about the person that wasn’t given his horse, he had to train his horse.”
Härvest is out 4/14 by way of Relapse Records.