Poison Ruin - Härvest

Philadelphia punks POISON RUIN make their Relapse Records debut with new album Harvest!

Evoking a rich tapestry of icy forests, peasant revolts and silent knights, POISON RUIN stabs at the throbbing heart of what it means to live under the permanent midnight of contemporary life. With Harvest, the band matched their sonic palette with a godless, medieval-inspired aesthetic symbolism, creating a record that hits with a certain sense of darkened harmony.

"I've always found fantasy tropes incredibly evocative," notes singer Mac Kennedy, "even though it's a set of symbols that seem to appeal to most people of our generation, they're often either apolitical or co-opted for incredibly regressive politics."

Kennedy recasts fantastical images as a series of totems for the oppressed, stripping them of their escapist tendencies and transforming them into a rich metaphor for the collective struggle for our shared reality: "Kennedy explains, "I'm all for protest songs, but with this band I've found that sometimes your message can appeal to a larger audience by infusing it with a certain interactive, almost magical-realistic element."

The title track evokes images of feudal peasants, tithes and money-hungry lords, and the labor horn sounds through the congregation: "Isn't this our harvest? Isn't this our feast to share?" Tales of the undead rising to exact revenge on those who have unwittingly wronged them unfold like pleasantly cathartic folk tales ("Resurrection II"), while other tracks deal with the deep beauty and spirit of those who eke out a living in the forgotten reaches of their homeland. Philadelphia ("Blighted Quarter"). The band looks into the abyss of modern life with a sober and empathetic perspective, showing our fractured reality as a complex and difficult to discern miasma of competing desires.

With Harvest POISON RUIN, they created a richly chilling fairy tale out of modern life. Their story is as enticing as it is seductive, as promising a fantasy as it is a grim portrait of reality itself.