Poison Ruïn - s/t

Fitting that we should return from Athens to find a box of the Poison Ruin debut awaiting us, a record it's often felt like a futile Homerian odyssey attempting to obtain. Heroes we are though because now here it sits, what is for my money one of the best 'punk' records of the last however long. Poison Ruin are a Philadelphia-based four piece who've to date remained fairly elusive for anyone this side of the Atlantic, releasing a couple of more or less hard to locate demo tapes and this self-titled record in a few editions on different labels. There's is a particularly charred approach that splits the difference between death rock, post-punk/hardcore and a thinly-veiled black metal mid-range bleakness - they often sound quite horrible and really quite brilliant with it, all one-and-done feral red line angst and a huge throbbing brain of neurosis. That great institution of the Punk Underground periodically chucks up entities like Poison Ruin, the ancestral flesh and bones of whom you can see draped over them but are somehow arranged into vital and thrillingly different shapes. Fingers crossed they make it this way soon, though you'd better believe i'd jump the pond to see them if need be. Essential? Whatever. Just very absolutely necessary.