POISON RUÏN - Hymns From The Hills - LP - 'Swamp Green' Coloured Vinyl [APR 3]

LP - Standard Limited Edition 'Swamp Green' Coloured Vinyl. 

Hymns From the Hills is meticulously composed. Much like the rest of Poison Ruïn's body of work, this LP was self-recorded without the use of professional studio equipment. To meet the greater sonic demands of Hymns From the Hills, however, mastermind Mac Kennedy relocated to a private practice space, retiring from his previous routine of squeezing in tracking sessions around the rare moments that the band’s shared practice space happened to be vacant. “Having added time to breathe and really get things right felt crucial this time,” he remarks. “The stress of having to work quickly and at chaotic intervals used to feel productive, in that it instilled a sort of rough, energetic ethos into the recordings, but I began to feel that those working habits were blocking me from pursuing certain ideas that required a more measured, methodical approach.”

To best serve the record’s grander ambitions, the band enlisted the mixing prowess of Jonah Falco (Fucked Up, Career Suicide) and the mastering of Arthur Rizk (Power Trip, Trapped Under Ice, Cavalera, Integrity), who helped to elevate the record’s teeming variety of sounds to new heights of self-assured fidelity. Kennedy lent a second hand to the mixing process, splicing in grittier tape recorded segments in order to maintain a certain tonal continuity with the band’s previous work, creating a rich structure of unconventional frictions, crystalline flashes of polish ripping through abysses of hissing low end only to shatter against the whipping sting of rusted chains moments later.

Lyrically, Hymns From The Hills extends both the cynicism and the defiant bravado of Poison Ruïn's 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 it’s echos call from outside of time. Medieval and fantasy imagery are simply effective personal starting points for tapping into that mode of communication.”

With Hymns From The Hills, Poison Ruïn have accomplished a feat of creative labour which few have the courage to entertain, much less the capacity to execute so effectively. Hymns From The Hills ambitiously rewrites the very rules of what punk is capable of achieving, pushing Poison Ruïn's 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. 

Tracklist: 

1. Intro
2. Lily Of The Valley
3. Hymn From The Hills 
4. Eidolon 
5. Howls From The Citadel
6. Pilgrimage
7. Guts (Lay Your Self Aside)
8. Turn To Dust
9. Puzzle Box
10. Serpent's Curse
11. Sleeping Giant (Interlude)
12. Crescent Sun
13. The Standoff