Album Review: Poison the Well – The Tropic Rot

One thing becomes immediately clear the moment the ferocious opening riff of ‘Exist Underground’, the lead track from Floridian hardcore alumni Poison the Well’s fifth long-player ‘The Tropic Rot’ tears forth from the speakers; this is a band that has a score to settle. Following on from 2007’s much maligned and criminally underrated ‘Versions’, ‘The Tropic Rot’ is the sound of a band making an emphatic statement of intent that flies in the face of fans and critics alike, who only two years previously had deemed Poison The Well a spent force.

Balancing the brooding ethereal expanses of ‘Versions’ with the feral brutality of their now seminal debut ‘The Opposite of December’, ‘The Tropic Rot’ contains moment after moment of jaw-dropping brilliance throughout that, far from sounding like a band on their way out, pushes the sonic envelope and displays all the signs of a band at the peak of their powers. ‘Celebrate the Pyre’ is an immediate slice of in your face post-hardcore perfection, with Jeffery Moiera’s unhinged vocal performance wonderfully complementing the terse drums and buzz saw guitar attack of Ryan Primack, while the gloriously titled ‘Who Doesn’t Love a Good Dismemberment’ and ‘Antarctica Inside me’ exhibit the more experimental side of the PTW sound, with the latter in particular incorporating atmospheric electronics and veering wildly from the melodious to the menacing without a second’s notice.

A breath of fresh air in a genre that of late has become distinctly stale, ‘The Tropic Rot’ is quite simply as engrossing and vital a record as you are likely to hear all year, and with it Poison The Well may have just produced their best work to date. Write them off again at your peril.

5/5

'The Tropic Rot' by Poison The Well is out now on Ferret Records.

Poison The Well on MySpace

Tom Weller