Poison The Well - Peace In Place - review
Poison The Well - Peace In Place - review
Tracklist
01. Wax Mask02. 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
A review by
RaduP May 13, 2026
When I first got into metal in the late noughties, "metalcore" was almost a dirty word. It was a period where it had its height of popularity, some of it making it to the mainstream extending beyond the Killswitch Engages and the Bullet For My Valentines, leading to a lot of people using and misusing terms like "screamo", "emo", and "post-hardcore" for a lot of the bands that came out of that scene. The reaction of the metal scene wasn't very positive, and neither was mine. It took a lot of time and digging under the surface to find out I actually enjoyed a lot of screamo, emo, and post-hardcore, just not the one that was presented as such back then. With hindsight, a lot of that scene can be grouped together with terms like "mall screamo" or "emo-pop", but the most relevant one is "melodic metalcore". That one specifically can be traced back to Poison The Well.
You might notice that Poison The Well is not as big of a mainstream name compared to a shitload of other melodic metalcore bands. The big difference is that they're not exactly a melodic metalcore band, at least not by how that sound eventually evolved. When Distance Only Makes The Heart Grow Fonder and The Opposite Of December... A Season Of Separation came out, that was a sound that didn't exist yet, and metalcore was in a very different place. Poison The Well did evolve from that version of the sound, but they'll always be a band who was contemporary with 90s metalcore, and even though the way their introduces alt/emo/post-hardcore melodies into it gave way to what would eventually be their sound, and their band name was a precursor for every "Verb The Noun" band, the other side of the bridge they've built is into a metalcore sound that me and the metal scene in general is fonder towards.
Peace In Place comes seventeen years after the band's previous album, and though that's far from the longest metalcore comeback gap, it's still not something I ever expected to see, and it's pretty neat that more than half the current lineup is from the original 90s/00s days. For such a long gap, it doesn't seem like the band lost a step, with Peace In Place sounding more akin to the alt-leaning Versions and The Tropic Rot than the more classic metalcore sounding aforementioned 90s albums; but also it does quite sound like the kind of album made by guys in their (presumably) late 40s, and somehow that makes Peace In Place a more well-rounded album than the two that preceded it.
There's two sides to the sound on this album. On one hand you have the more hardcore leaning side, one that does feel more in line with 90s post-hardcore, with big riffs and jagged harsh vocals, making the harsher side of the sound feel groovy and heavy, though not necessarily crushing or pummeling in the way a full-throttle hardcore sound could be. The other part of the sound being a more chorus and atmosphere heavy alt-leaning sound that sounds closer to Deftones than what one would expect from a melodic metalcore's melodic side does make for an album that reaffirms Poison The Well as a vital albeit aging force while seemingly also distancing them from the pandora's box they opened decades ago.
Comments
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Posts: 1819
Think I’d rather listen to Killswitch or BFMV honestly. I like this kinda metalcore but Poison The Well does nothing for me.
---- Need a break from headbanging? Restore your street cred by visiting my hip-hop list! Tha Swagnum Opus: A Selection Of Hip-Hop For The Curious Metalhead
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 Posts: 9624 |
Posts: 9624 Written by A Real Mönkey on 13.05.2026 at 17:59 Skill issue
---- Do you think if the heart keeps on shrinking One day there will be no heart at all?
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Posts: 1819 |
Posts: 1819 Written by RaduP on 13.05.2026 at 19:55 Can't spell Killswitch without Skill.
---- Need a break from headbanging? Restore your street cred by visiting my hip-hop list! Tha Swagnum Opus: A Selection Of Hip-Hop For The Curious Metalhead
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Posts: 9624 Written by A Real Mönkey on 13.05.2026 at 20:35 You're just saying that because they made CM Punk's best theme song.
---- Do you think if the heart keeps on shrinking One day there will be no heart at all?
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Posts: 1819 |
Posts: 1819 Written by RaduP on 13.05.2026 at 22:35 I don’t even like CM Punk (im more of a Cena guy), but yes.
---- Need a break from headbanging? Restore your street cred by visiting my hip-hop list! Tha Swagnum Opus: A Selection Of Hip-Hop For The Curious Metalhead
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Posts: 9624 Written by A Real Mönkey on 14.05.2026 at 01:05 They were each others' best match, so makes sense. Give this album another listen tho.
---- Do you think if the heart keeps on shrinking One day there will be no heart at all?
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