{"id":91686,"date":"2023-04-05T11:25:43","date_gmt":"2023-04-05T11:25:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/05\/poison-ruin-harvest-interview\/"},"modified":"2023-04-05T11:25:43","modified_gmt":"2023-04-05T11:25:43","slug":"poison-ruin-harvest-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/05\/poison-ruin-harvest-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Poison Ru\u00efn ‘H\u00e4rvest’ Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A YouTube add of a Poison Ru\u00efn dwell set in Queens describes the band as \u201csound[ing] like they reside and rehearse in a dark medieval dungeon.\u201d Not fairly \u2014 the band was born in a Philadelphia warehouse basement rehearsal area \u2014 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 H\u00e4rvest<\/em>, the band pairs the imagery of that world with murky, soiled anarcho-punk. It\u2019s not escapism, however the reverse \u2014 laying naked the throughline of brutality and oppression from the Dark Ages to our fashionable life. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea was that I wanted to have a project that had a wide range of sound, but therefore needed something to unify it,\u201d says Kennedy, talking from dwelling alongside drummer and roommate Allen Chapman. \u201cI was trying to figure out some kind of symbolism or overarching idea that could tie everything together \u2014 musically, lyrically, and with the [visual] art.\u201d <\/p>\n

Grim new single \u201cTorture Chamber\u201d is among the album\u2019s easiest and best songs. Kennedy\u2019s vocals are gruff and gnarled as he barks: \u201cTrapped in the torture chamber\/ Tightened chain\/ Suffering.\u201d The album\u2019s title monitor makes use of the thought of a peasant revolt to talk to fashionable class wrestle and revolution; \u201cTome Of Illusion\u201d examines the development and exploitation of faith; \u201cBlighted Quarter\u201d is in regards to the hope and resistance that may shine via in communities left to endure \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re sold a lie of linear advancement or progression through time, which is just fundamentally untrue,\u201d Kennedy says. \u201cWe 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\u2019s daily lives as whatever peasant with a hood on is being imagined.\u201d <\/p>\n

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. \u201cNot to say there aren\u2019t small towns that have great music scenes, but ours was very tentative \u2014 if one person was doing stuff and then sorta dropped out it would dry up and disappear,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 \u201cMy dad would get wasted and just rave about how much he fucking hated George Bush\u201d \u2014 and had been bolstered when some older associates from college launched him to the idea of a DIY scene.<\/p>\n

Both of them ended up in Philly by their early 20s, drawn to the thriving music scene and low cost hire. Poison Ru\u00efn started initially of the pandemic, when Kennedy lastly discovered the time to flesh out among the musical concepts he\u2019d been kicking round, leading to the mission\u2019s debut EP<\/a>, 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 \u2014 the lineup is accomplished by guitarist Nao Demand and bassist Will McAndrew. \u201cWe started practicing in probably September or October of 2020, and this wasn\u2019t even necessarily with the intention of being a band,\u201d says Kennedy. \u201cI think we all quietly aspired and hoped to do that, but it wasn\u2019t a time of particularly wanting to make optimistic predictions about the future or what you were gonna do with your time.\u201d <\/p>\n

Their first gig was a car parking zone profit present in July 2021. \u201cI\u2019ve 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,\u201d 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. \u201cI feel like when you\u2019re 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\u2019re doing, just pushing as far as energy, so we were trying to do that,\u201d says Kennedy. \u201cSome bands it\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

H\u00e4rvest<\/em>, 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. \u201cIt took a long time to mix it because I was definitely more self-aware this time. I think Allen remembers one time \u2014 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, \u2018Dude, I feel like I need to start this whole thing over. I\u2019m going insane.\u2019 And I didn\u2019t, I just saw it through. [But] when you\u2019re making a follow-up to something, there\u2019s a little more sweating.\u201d The sound he ended up with is so lo-fi it\u2019s virtually suffocating, emphasizing the picture of a darkish and brutal actuality because it obscures and chokes the explosive instrumentals. \u201cI think it gives it this quality where it\u2019s kind of like an artifact. It\u2019s like listening to recordings that feel like they\u2019re lost,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

From the sonics to the album paintings \u2014 a chainmail-clad peasant holding a scythe, a peace-sign mace dangling from the band emblem \u2014 there\u2019s a deliberate, holistic crafting of the band\u2019s id. An thought of reclamation was necessary to the band, Kennedy says: \u201cMost 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\u2019s just a no-brainer \u2014 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the right wing stuff in extreme music, especially NSBM<\/a> and stuff like that, there\u2019s a lot of hidden dog-whistling within it too,\u201d provides Chapman. \u201cIt\u2019s just like, okay, there\u2019s this little rune in the corner over here, is this the good rune or the bad rune? There\u2019s a lot of cowardice in that. But I think aesthetically for [our] stuff, there\u2019s no hiding anything \u2014 it\u2019s like, here\u2019s these known symbols for equality and peace and solidarity. It\u2019s very within the text.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah. Obviously those folks are irredeemable scumbag pieces of shit, but they\u2019re also fucking losers. That\u2019s nerdy garbage, we hate it,\u201d says Kennedy.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s nothing too self-serious about Poison Ru\u00efn; 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. \u201cYou think about revolution as a complete overthrow of an entire system,\u201d says Chapman. \u201cBut thinking about the way that stuff starts \u2026 it\u2019s not the knight in shining armor, not the member of the imperial court, not the one that\u2019s knighted by the republic. It begins at the fields, because society doesn\u2019t exist without somebody that tills the fields. And it\u2019s pointing the focus at that type of solidarity. It\u2019s about the person that wasn\u2019t given his horse, he had to train his horse.\u201d<\/p>\n

H\u00e4rvest<\/em> is out 4\/14 by way of Relapse Records.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n