Poison the Well is neither here nor there. Their latest release, You Come Before You, is an attempt to mix hardcore and melodic songwriting. While one has to give the band credit for evolving, it seldom rises above its own confusion.
You Come Before You‘s attempt to bridge the gap between scream-core and pop begins promisingly with “Ghostchant.” The track starts with a quick bout of screaming and then switches to a slower vocal line with harmonies. Vocalist Jeffery Moreira has a surprisingly clear singing voice, but the difficulty to reconcile the singer and the screamer ultimately works to Poison the Well’s disadvantage in the long run.
Since Moreira is usually screaming at the top of his lungs, there is little vocal variation. It’s impossible to follow up screaming with much commentary. Few listeners have ever remarked, “Oh, that scream sounds sad.” You know that Moreira is angry, but that’s the extent of his expressive range.
Because of this, few songs seem coherent. The band nearly pulls off the transition on a few tracks, but usually the effect is to disengage rather than draw in.
On “Meeting Again For The First Time,” Moreira begins the song reflectively, singing “Barely able to keep the lids open / At times I might think I need the rest,” but he quickly escalates to a gut-wrenching scream on the following “It’s already hard enough to say I need it.” Instead of communicating a sense of deep-seated anger or pain, his performance serves more to make him appear juvenile.
Which brings up the issue of Poison the Well’s lyrics. They often seem too deliberately deep, ranging from self-mutilation to anger to despondency, and the object of those emotions are never brought to light. All Poison the Well manages to do is present a terrible, static situation with not even an illusion of order or hope.
The sketches described lack much in the way of dissection, and remain somewhat shallow. On “The Realist,” Moreira sings about another man or boy who is going to either harm himself or somebody else — possibly a son, it’s hard to tell. Then the song ends. There is no action that occurs outside of the artist’s head. Unrhymed lyrics and an open ending (“I apologize apologize, you’re old enough to take care of …”) only add to the confusion.
In the final song, “Crystal Lake,” Moreira has the closest thing to an epiphany on the disc. He sings, “Sitting here I realize that I always think I’m right,” promising some kind of change, but he turns around with “So it’s over for all of you.” Moreira claims the world to be an apathetic place, then states that it’s because everybody else needs to change, but with lines like “If I could flip this table I’d stab you with every word that lied its way / out of your head,” it’s hard to sympathize with the band and provide it the compassion it asks for.
Poison the Well isn’t entirely bad, though. The music itself isn’t bad at all. Effective guitar work by Derek Miller and Ryan Primack helps to anchor the album. An excellent sense for variety and some absolutely amazing guitar lines keep tracks from getting old.
It’s almost easy to forgive lax lyrics when Moreira and the guitarists come together. On the ending of “The Realist,” Moreira hits a perfect vocal match to Hornbrook’s guitar line, and the two mesh perfectly. Unfortunately, moments like these happen only a few times, and the rest of the lines remaining disconnected from the music.
Drumming is spot-on as well, going deftly between time signatures and always remaining taut. Chris Hornbrook (drums) knows when to drop back and let the other instruments take center stage, but he never loses his presence.
In the end, You Come Before You isn’t a very convincing album. It comes across as an angry protest with nothing to back it up but idle rage — an album that demands social change but gives no way to do so or reason that doing so would be worthwhile.
