Philadelphia Punks POISON RUIN make their Relapse Records debut with their new album, Harvest! Evoking a rich tapestry of ice-caked forests, peasant revolts, and silent knights, POISON RUIN stab at the pulsing heart of what it means to live under the permanent midnight of contemporary life. With Harvest, the band 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 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.” 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,” Kennedy 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.” The title track invokes images of feudal peasants, tithes, and money-hungry lords, sounding the horn of labor with the rallying cry, “Isn’t this our harvest? Isn’t this our feast to share?” Tales of the undead rising to take revenge upon those who have unknowingly wronged them spin out like pleasantly cathartic folktales (“Resurrection II”), while other tracks address the profound beauty and spirit of those making ends meet in the forsaken ends of POISON RUIN’s hometown of Philadelphia (“Blighted Quarter”). The band stares into the abyss of modern living with a sober and empathetic outlook, portraying our cracked reality as a complex and difficult to parse miasma of competing desires. With Harvest, POISON RUIN have constructed a richly chilling fable out of modern living. Their tale is as lurid as it is seductive, as much a promising fantasy as it is a dreary portrait of reality itself.

WHAAAAAAAAT THEY’RE ON RELAPSE NOW?! OH SHIT CONGRATS TO THE BOYS!

One of the sickest videos I’ve seen in a long time

HOLLY SHITTTT THIS IS IT BOYS

This is simultaneously super goofy and super fucking sick at the same time I love it.

Best video in a while

Hell Yeah! These dudes have Turbonegro vibes! I'm diggin' it!! \m/

These guys moving on up, \m/

This is awesome

This was fun!

Nos vemos en Barna, moviendo el buyate a tope!

I found Poison Ruin on Vsndcamp about a year ago, now, of coursectgey R on my favorite label, its good to see Relapse still fors some good musac

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

That riff kicks ass \m/

Fire

🤘💀🤘

old school is the only school

Amazing video

Que chimba parceros!!!! Me recuerda a eskorbuto!

Greatest music video since Immortal's Call of the Wintermoon

Marcus from last podcast on the left turned me on to these guys

Solid f***ing album. Dope video. Nice to hear some original sounds. Shoutout to, Dennis from Refused for putting me on to them.

SO RAD.

damn this video is so cool

fetzt!

I just hope theyre planing to make a europe tour 🤘🏼🤘🏼

nostalgic, sounds like 90s horror cartoon soundtrack

anarchy peace equality

On my AOTY nothing like it…

This is like american RAC

Sounds like Motorhead but awesome