There is a fine line between nostalgia and re-enactment. Mechanically channeling earlier times might be easy, but if the feeling isn’t right, the effort feels pointless. Poison Ruïn have always danced around this dichotomy, at times offering tribute to the old greats, but at their best seeming to step directly into their skin. Their new work, Hymns From the Hills, tilts the balance toward the latter, going further in inhabiting the time and space when punk and post-punk intersected.
At its core lies the punk attitude, evident in its primal, urgent presence. “Pilgrimage” takes on a rugged progression, bringing down heavy riffs over the monolithic rhythmic structures. “Turn to Dust” goes for a more energetic sound, with its D-beat acceleration breathing a sense of uncontrollable energy. On top of this foundation, Poison Ruïn weave their deathrock and post-punk mechanics.
“Serpent’s Curse” lives in the intersection, the sweet spot between punk aggression and otherworldliness, its flow still carrying a punk-styled drive but its guitar work much closer to the early post-punk awkwardness. It is this style of playing that allows Poison Ruïn to tap into different scenes, with “Lily of the Valley” channelling a garage vibe, its lighter passages contrasting with a more sardonic undercurrent, a tension similar to that found on the sole Beastmilk record.
Poison Ruïn’s re-enactment is not solely confined to the punk and post-punk scenes. That has always been the case, but with Hymns From the Hills, they are making a stronger statement about this. The folk tones are sharper, the acoustic guitar in the title track producing a fantastically bizarre trip across the fey, while the synth-driven “Howls from the Citadel” offers a reclusive nod to the neofolk generation. It naturally builds into a quasi-industrial rendition that has much in common with the early Psychic TV material, but even more so with Killing Joke’s seminal debut.
“Crescent Sun” is the most stunning of these moments, as it melts the organic into the mechanical, contorting the strict industrial schemes with abrupt, scathing movements toward something more mystical.
On top of all that, classic heavy metal ideas of the rugged variety find their place here. The guitar leads in “Eidolon” scream with the streetwise vibe of early Thin Lizzy, while the doom motifs of “Sleeping Giant” drive a Black Sabbath locomotive with a touch of neofolk magic. Still, the most surprising moment is “The Standoff”, where the scorching start escapes the confines of the 1970s and 1980s, its black metal pulse offering the final grin before the curtain falls.
With the re-enactment complete and the stage emptied, Poison Ruïn have come closest to their original goal of embedding themselves in the lineage of early punk and post-punk. Hymns from the Hills is a powerful listen, filled with nostalgia, but delivered in a way that doesn’t read as a mere tribute but rather as a continuation of a tradition.