On their new album Harvest, which is an April release from Relapse Records, the Philadelphia group Poison Ruin use sonic motifs of classic punk and catchy metal to go both back and far, far into the future, relaying an immersive story of winning against oppressors.
The music is both dramatically forceful and uplifting, like using the rallying cry of an eventual victory to guide some battle in a powerful symbol of fervent hope, and the lyrics reflect this idea, telling stories of rebellion.
The energetic riffing, which remains nearly unbroken throughout Harvest, ends up feeling uplifting, bluntly directing your attention to the sky above and horizon ahead with its seemingly ever-forward perspective. Galloping off towards the fight on the fumes of these commanding instrumentals keeps the metaphorical blood pumping.
In part, but not only, from the somewhat lo-fi vibe that Poison Ruin incorporate, Harvest also feels very grounded. This is the gritty music of revolting peasants, where the rhythms themselves suggest violently smashing through long-resented stone walls — or otherwise asserting dominance in place of exploitation. It’s a physically active, aggressive, and sometimes artfully grating album. The songs carry heavy weight in the breadth of the sound, and from the drums to the guitars and everything else, the ingredients for this maelstrom sound deeply realized, like expressions of individual spirits of the forest who’ve come to help.
Harvest from Poison Ruin proves itself to be an arresting statement of vision. It’s also just really catchy. Below, see what vocalist/guitarist Mac Kennedy has to say about Harvest, from his interest in the themes of medieval life to his accompanying interest in Renaissance music.
Looking back, did the pointed themes of the record shape a lot of how the instrumentals eventually sounded? Harvest seems like a very cohesive vision.
In a way. With the lyrical themes and imagery being what they are, using the palette that they use, basically like compositionally there’s a little bit of an attempt to throw in some things that are maybe a little more — how do I say this? There’s an attempt to put some sort of archaic-sounding things, modal ideas, and some musical ideas that you don’t usually hear in rock and punk music. They are intended to give a feeling that aligns with the lyrics. So there’s that. As far as instrumentation or arrangement, I’m aware of where it’s all going in the process of writing it, so I’m sure there’s a lot of small decisions that are made along the way to cast it all more in that light or in that direction. But it’s not a super labor- and thought-intensive thing. A lot of it’s intuitive.
With the lyrical themes Poison Ruin explore, is there something that comes to mind that piqued your interest in all this stuff, or was it more just a long-standing point of interest for you?
Long-standing point of interest. I can’t think of some sort of galvanizing influence or something like that, except that, yeah, it’s a long-standing interest over time through playing music in different bands. And really this started because I was developing a cache of song ideas that didn’t fit into other projects that I was playing in but that seemed to have kind of their own identity. They covered a range of sound that was a bit wider than typically how I’d organize the sound for a band. So the idea was to find something outside of just the music itself to tie it all together. And that was where the medieval or dark fantasy thing came in.
It’s just a long-standing, both personal and visual interest. I have feelings about symbolically what it tends to represent culturally and how I felt it had potential to say more than it usually does. It’s funny, it’s such a point of identity for us, because we just do it in a very specific way. But I mean, swords and medieval shit have been part of heavy music since the very beginning. It’s just like maybe we’re trying to take that and instead of it just being for badassness’s sake or something, try to actually say something with it.
[…] I think that there’s maybe some kind of collective understanding or feeling about that as a metaphor or a way to talk about current situations. You can always dig and find people have always been doing and saying the same things. There’s nothing new in what we’re doing as far as that goes.
Back with the instrumentals, do you feel like developing a specifically catchy vibe felt important for you at any point in crafting Harvest? Leaning on hooks — or, well, not — can seem rather distinguishing.
When I find music that I really come back to and really like, typically that’s part of it, but again, I think it’s just naturally how the music happens. I don’t sit around and try to think of a catchy thing or come up with an idea and then think, “How can you change this to make it catchy?” or something. It’s just basically having a melody or some little, incessant thing knocking around in your head to begin with, and then recording that into a voice memo or something like that, and then saving that to turn into a song later. And I guess working that way, the things that are knocking around in the head happen to be catchy ideas. That’s how they get there in the first place. So I think that’s how that works. I basically just filter through a ton of different ideas and the ones that seem to stick out to me the most are the ones that make it on the records. Probably the reason they’re sticking out is because they’re catchy. There’s not a concerted effort as far as that goes, other than to just write good songs.
[…] You’re getting off on the wrong foot if you start with a preconceived notion. To me, the big challenge with this band is usually starting with a raw, musical idea and then trying to figure out how to fit it into the genre, style context that we play. And sometimes it can be a challenge, but that’s the part where there’s more labor going into and thought going into it. It’s really just starting with a pure idea and then figuring out how to sort of dress it up or make it work with a four-piece, punk-band set-up.
Poison Ruin seem to be doing, well, rather well in perhaps a comparatively short period of time. Has the attention been a lot to take in, or are you just used to the process now of a song or record you put out getting a lot of attention?
I’m certainly not used to people caring very much about it, other than peers and friends and people in my immediate music scene. So, it is new. It’s what you want; it’s what you sort of hope for. Maybe not, you know, people have different goals as far as the reach of what they’re doing, but you make something because basically you think it’s good and you want to share it. So, it’s great having people I don’t know or who are not being asked to do so actually care about the music that’s being made. It’s not that challenging to just respond to what needs to be responded to and having people on your side that tell you what needs to be done as far as the machinations of being a band. But really, we just try to ignore that and treat it like it’s just making music for ourselves in our practice space or something, you know?
[…] Having to suddenly do all this stuff — it changes the perception of time a bit when you’re doing more with a particular band in a year. It stretches out the perception of that. The last year as far as the band goes has felt like more has happened than typically happens in a year with a project I’m involved in. But yeah — being an entity in the world definitely feels new still. When we did our first tour, it was early last year or like May of last year, and it’s funny, we’d only played a few shows. We’ve all played a million shows in other bands and stuff, but like, people were acting like we’d been a band for forever, and it was like, they don’t know this is like our fifth show. It still is pretty surreal, but at this point we’re settled in as far as all that goes. It’s relatively new, but we’ve done a fair amount and operated as a band. We got a lot of experience in as a group in the last year or so. We’re in it; there’s no longer some kind of shock or something.
More generally, when you think about the current state of the world, do you feel generally optimistic, like maybe a lot of people are coming to terms with how to right the rhetorical ship? Pessimistic? Some of both, depending on the day?
It depends. But I would say, as far as many of the societal structures and things like that that we rely on and take for granted, I feel quite pessimistic. As far as people’s natural ability to through shared community and shared identity — and people just being able to take care of each other, I think I’m always quietly optimistic, because I mean, that’s already what the reality that I see a lot of the time is anyway. I don’t know. I don’t want to speak to that too much, but I think people could be alright. As far as the ship goes, I don’t know. It might be going down.
And a more boilerplate question: what music have you been really listening to and enjoying lately, of any time period, style, or the like?
I’m not the best for this. I’m always listening to whatever new punk demos are coming out, and hardcore punk. There’s always a constant stream of that. That’s a lot of my new music that I’m actually on top of. I tend to be slower getting around to what’s going on. I’m always curious, but I’m not really the guy to point people to stuff. I often am lost in my little world.
Listening in the winter, there’s always more black metal in the shuffle in the winter. The dreary end of the season matches the mood well. I try to escape from music industry, music world, contemporary band stuff a lot of the time in what I listen to. I like listening to a lot of niche comps of different genres and folk traditions around the world, and classical music and stuff like that. A lot of the time when I’m listening to music, I want it to just kind of take me out of the world of bands and rock and all of that. The last week I’ve been listening to Renaissance choral music primarily, you know? It’s been very nice, because sometimes I just need it. It’s like a blanket or something, you know? Just putting the noise-canceling headphones on, putting on [Giovanni Pierluigi da] Palestrina in the hotel with four other dudes.
Photo courtesy of Cecil Shang Whaley.
