Album Review: Poison Ruin- Harvest (w/ bonus Peasant Rallying Cries table!)

January 20, 2024

Best album of 2023.

I didn’t expect my favorite album of 2023 to be a punk album. While I like punk, it ranks much further down the ladder than metal, noise, electronic, and even alternative pop for me. Why? It’s good, but it’s stale. Every metal subgenre gets a revival every 10-15 years, it seems like. Black metal used to be pretty monolithic and kvlt, and then around 2008ish it exploded into a diverse array of technical, atmospheric, gazey, death-y, folky, whatever-y stuff. Death metal is doing the same right now. Punk generally doesn’t innovate without splintering- emo isn’t really punk anymore, for example, and screamo folded into (bad) metal. Traditional, hardcore and crust/blackened punk have been the only “true” punk I’ve been able to stand for a long while, and finally something new comes along! Serf punk! No, not “surf” punk. Poison Ruin is the perfect music for RPG nerds.

Poison Ruin are doing something that someone should’ve thought of long before this. They’ve taken the far-flung genres of dungeon synth, traditional punk, and fantasy black metal, and fused them into an aesthetic that feels natural. Not only this, but it’s conceptual! This balance is almost impossible to imagine- conceptual but authentic, technically impressive while loose and proletarian, lo-fi while balanced and whole. Poison Ruin’s primary strength lies in its production, which is incredibly rare for punk. Like kvlt black metal, recording techniques were either neglected or intentionally sabotaged in favor of rawness and primal, aggressive sonic power. Poison Ruin introduces a hazy fuzz of black metal ambience obscuring the vocals and mutes the guitars, but never masks the music itself, which is always catchy and absorbing. This provides the atmosphere of darkness and antiquity, and the synthesizers bring magic and superstition to the instrumentation, which is complemented by classic punk riffs as well as a bit of surfer and rockabilly sound. The vocals are classic punk, but muffled by the production to sound even rougher than the standard working man’s gruff punk chant, and the lyrics themselves are particularly great. While you can’t easily make them out due to the dusty production, they move you with catchy energy, and if you make it out or study the lyric sheet, you’ll find clever songs about plotting uprisings against lords who tax the harvest, protesting conscription for meaningless feudal conflicts, and hoping for the resurrection of the dead to tear the corrupt church and rulers from their chambers in the night.

The album isn’t a singular narrative, but it’s paced in a way that makes it fluid and engaging. Its beginning and end are framed by magical and longing synth pieces. The songs themselves build up energy from the calm and the fuzz into explosive, energetic songs. Even as they fade out or taper into feedback, they boil with momentum. This is best exemplified in the opener Pinnacle of Ecstasy, which comes from the scene-setting keyboard intro, becomes a rousing jam instantly when the guitars hit and the raucous drums come in a few seconds later, and then abruptly ceases the momentum, jarringly, into feedback only to lead into Tome of Illusion which recaptures the energy a mere few seconds later, while showcasing a more ominous sound. My favorite tracks are Resurrection II, with an addictive rockabilly-esque riff, and Bastard’s Dance, which uses a sample of a whetstone scraping on the blade of a sword before hitting probably the most authentically punk-feeling song in both lyrics and execution, being about the folly of fighting a war for a cause that matters only to the nobles, showing the type of life that builds up such desire for uprising or the coming of dark magical judgment upon them as spoken of in the lyrics of Harvest and Resurrection.

This album is a transportative experience. You aren’t just listening to a punk album, you’re listening to a cultural artifact of an alternate past where the punk movement arose from the hopelessness and oppression of the Dark Ages, where magic and violence ruled over the land and its people. It’s a statement of empowerment of the masses, to rally from the toil of the stolen harvest, the theft of fighting-age men to die in noble feuds, and the mental slavery of the Church. Imagine this alternate past, and what the world would look like if the peasants had seized this power and the joyful riotous celebration of the punk movement. Resurrect!

666/666

Bonus Gameable Content

D20 Rabble Revolt Rallying Cries

d20	Peasant Rallying Cry
1	2d8 energetic “Oi!”’s
2	The scythe shall reap the heads of the wicked as they cut the grains of the wheat!
3	Hands of the fallen, drag the false prophets to the grave!
4	The Augur Die has spoken! It is time to take our due!
5	The hand that reaches into our purses and pots must now be removed!
6	Our lords are not the wolves they claim and herald, they are curs, and they shall hound our heels no more!
7	They eat boar while we stretch our broth for days! The table we fill for them should be ours! Let them earn their own feast!
8	Brethren save your strength! Your backs will soon lift not stones of the field but the battering ram!
9	Our hunger strengthens our resolve! The lords know not the danger of the starved hound!
10	The priesthood have bought their titles from the tax of OUR grain! Our yield is not for their pleasure, it is for our families- by law of Nature, not by God!
11	The magic of the wise woman is not of the Devil, it is of our tradition! Follow it to victory, cast out that which damns our souls for naught but following the nature of man!
12	The wealthy do not shelter pigs and goats at their hearth through the cold winter months. Why should we suffer for peat while they rest aside their perfumed braziers? Let them know the cold, and we the comfort of the manor!
13	You dig for roots, while they savor the finest tarts of the baker! Let them grind their own flour, coop their own foul, herd their own flocks! I say that we work for each other, not the craven leeches who take the best for themselves!
14	The priests pray for their wage and board. We toil! For what do we give our labor? The serf has no time to sin, his hands cannot idle from his sowing and reaping! Reclaim what is ours!
15	We wear cord and sackcloth while they garb themselves in silk! And who works their land and holds their banners? It is we! They are the generals, but we are the army! Revolt, I say!
16	The smells of sweat and dung have lain long enough in my nostrils! I say it is time for my feet to rest on a cushion, and those of you who fight with me shall as well!
17	The taste of oaths has curdled like sow’s milk! I will honor that which was forced out of me no longer! I am my own man! Who shall be free beside me?
18	Take your axe! Your scythe! Your bow! Hold them now, that your hands may hold food and coin in their stead soon!
19	I have seen the dead children, starved and plagued! I brook it no longer! I demand shelter from the rats, and reject the walls which repel me! Cast out those who would see us dead, and live!
20	Come and see the violence inherent in the system! We shall form an anarcho-syndicalous commune!