Poison Ruïn have released their latest single, “Resurrection II” - a cathartic tale of the undead rising to take revenge upon those who have unknowingly wronged them. It’s full revenge fantasy with melodic rocking, equally split between surf motifs and new wave of British Heavy heavy metal riffing. Watch the clip below.
Evoking a rich tapestry of ice-caked forests, metaphoric peasant revolts and silent knights, Poison Ruïn stab at the pulsing heart of what it means to live under the permanent midnight of contemporary life. Their forthcoming album Harvest gazes at the world with a sense of grave seriousness, its stare softened only by the alluring seduction of a dream world’s open-ended possibility. These songs move with a type of uncanny confidence, assembling an array of references to past styles and sensibilities that collapse in on one another, congealing into a truly unique sonic landscape.
With Harvest, Poison Ruïn aligns their sonic palette to their godless, medieval-inflected aesthetic symbolism, creating a record which strikes with an assured sense of blackened harmony.
“I’ve always found fantasy tropes to be incredibly evocative,” vocalist/guitarist Mac Kennedy notes, “that said, even though they are a set of symbols that seem to speak to most people of our generation, they are often either apolitical or co-opted for incredibly backwards politics.”
With Harvest’s lyrics and imagery, Kennedy reworks fantasy imagery as a series of totems for the downtrodden, stripping it of its escapist tendencies and retooling it as a rich metaphor for the collective struggle over our shared reality: “Instead of knights in shining armor and dragons, it’s a peasant revolt,” he explains, “I’m all for protest songs, but with this band I’ve found that sometimes your message can reach a greater audience if you imbue it with a certain interactive, almost magical realist element.”
These are not superficial or self-aggrandizing political statements. Rather, Poison Ruïn stares into the abyss of present-day life with a sober and empathetic outlook, portraying our cracked reality as a complex and difficult to parse miasma of competing desires.
Härvest tracklisting:
"Pinnacle Of Ecstasy"
"Tome Of Illusion"
"Torture Chamber"
"Härvest"
"Frozen Blood"
"Resurrection I"
"Resurrection II"
"Augur Die"
"Blighted Quarter"
"Bastard’s Dance"
"Slowly Through The Dark"
(Photo - Cecil Shang Whaley)
