Poison Ruïn have just announced a brand-new record! Titled Hymns from the Hills, this new offering ambitiously rewrites the very rules of what punk is capable of achieving, pushing their sound into expansive new terrains without sacrificing an ounce of the bleak symbolism and uncompromising aggression that first established them as an urgent new voice in the world of extreme music. The Philadelphia punks have expanded their signature approach to grim mythmaking and scythe-swinging aggression in bold new directions, offering up a new body of songs that strike one as equal parts natural, undeniably of this world, and phantasmal.
On Hymns from the Hills, Poison RuÏn’s previous stories of toil and dispossession are revealed to be but one chapter etched upon a bleaker tapestry- One populated by spirits traversing sunless deserts and wilted hillsides, demonic torture objects limning the edges of the psyche, bodies transfigured into Luciferian snakes, Sadean prisoners bound to the screaming silence of abandoned castle towers. Poison RuÏn’s signature form of raw, anthemic aggression pummels on lead single “Eidolon”, which you can listen to below this article. Frontman, lyricist and guitarist Mac Kennedy states, “Eidolon’ is about being stuck in a broken reality, a cog in a fate-machine doomed to play out the same cursed loop until it fully breaks down. The ones who had the power to affect change have abandoned the scene. Their phantoms loom down in quiet disapproval of the disaster that slowly plays out beneath– Grim reminders of what could have, but will not be.”
The record is at once a forceful restatement of Poison Ruïn’s trademark sound and a departure from it. The crackling, cassette-dubbed darkness and crushing rhythms listeners have become accustomed to are buttressed by a carefully sculpted mosaic of new textures, from flourishes of Killing Joke hacksaw primitivism and blast-beats worthy of the Relapse catalogue number to crisp analog synth lines and ambient serenades reminiscent of Scott Walker and The Durutti Column. Like a serpent moving ever outward with spiraling circularity, Hymns from the Hills expands Poison Ruïn’s sonic landscape in imaginative new directions while maintaining its center of gravity firmly in the band’s already established mythos. Poison Ruin’s mythic sensibilities grip at new poetic heights. Lyrically, Hymns from the Hills extends both the cynicism and the defiant bravado of their established fantasy aesthetics. While the record continues Poison Ruïn’s tradition of employing medieval-inflected fantasy imagery, Kennedy does not intend for these figures to be read as historically accurate. “I’m not very interested in conveying the historical facts of medieval culture. If we are to make sense of the present, we need to employ a more mythic mode of language and symbol to reach beyond the spiritual malaise that envelopes us. A mythic truth resonates within any time, but its echoes call from outside of time. Medieval and fantasy imagery are simply effective personal starting points for tapping into that mode of communication.”
Hymns From The Hills will be released on April 3rd via Relapse Records. Pre-orders are now available here.
Photo credit: Kat Bean
