Decades ago, Florida’s Poison The Well helped invent metalcore. They were doing skull-shattering heavy riffs and sincerely aggrieved bellows and grand-vista textures and occasional bursts of melody in the late ’90s, and several generations of bands have followed their lead. Poison The Well went on hiatus in 2010 and returned five years later, but they’ve mostly been playing live shows, not releasing new music. That’s about to change. This spring, PTW will release Peace In Place, their first new album since 2009’s The Tropic Rot.
Last year, Poison The Well released “Trembling Level,” their first new song in more than 15 years. That was the band’s announcement that they were ready to make a new album and return to full-time status. It was well-timed, as a whole new wave of bands like Balmora and I Promised The World revives their sound. Plenty of those musicians weren’t born when PTW released the 1999 classic The Opposite of December… A Season of Separation.
Frontman Jerry Moreira says that Peace In Place is “probably the most pissed record we’ve ever made. After stepping away from Poison the Well, it felt like all the emotion from that time — frustration, heartache, disappointment — compressed into something heavy and unavoidable. But anger isn’t what drives us. Connection is.” The band’s new single “Thoroughbreds” is a vast, fiery exorcism about the strength of people’s bonds. Check out the Chris Candy-directed video and the Peace In Place tracklist below.
TRACKLIST:
01 “Wax Mask”
02 “Primal Bloom”
03 “Thoroughbreds”
04 “Everything Hurts”
05 “Weeping Tones”
06 “A Wake Of Vultures”
07 “Bad Bodies”
08 “Drifting Without End”
09 “Melted”
10 “Plague Them The Most”
Peace In Place is out 3/20 on SharpTone. Pre-order it here.
Sarai Kelley