Poison Ruin 'Hymns From the Hills' LP

Poison Ruin return with their highly anticipated sophomore LP,  Hymns From the Hills. Building off the strengths of their existing oeuvre, the band has developed their signature approach to grim mythmaking and scythe-swinging aggression in bold new directions, offering up a new body of songs that strike one as equal parts natural, undeniably of this world, and phantasmal.

Hymns From the Hills is meticulously composed. Much like the rest of Poison Ruin'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.

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.

FFO: Rudimentary Peni, Straw Man Army, Killing Joke, Institute, (early) Iceage, Crass, Husker Du, Warthog