Poison The Preacher – Things I Want EP
Poison The Preacher – Things I Want EP
Seek and Strike
Release date: 17 /07/26
Review by: Jon Deaux
7/10
It’s just four songs, but by the end of it I was drenched in sweat, heart pounding with mascara running down my cheeks, even though I wasn’t wearing any!.
In Colombia, there is an approach to optimism that revolves around looking straight at the sun until it gives up and says sorry, and it seems Poison The Preacher took that as inspiration for their songwriting process. Things I Want contains just four tracks, which is either commendably minimalistic or a merciful homicide depending on what your ribcage feels like after, and on the cover, there is a maimed Daruma doll, one eye already punched out by someone who mixed the drums in. Carrera describes this album as “a more definitive and unique sound”, in other words, they learned how loud they could set the amps up, and they definitely did. So henny, march away from here, genre barriers — we didn’t ask you here for no reason.
‘Things I Want ft Speed’ starts not so much as opens but kicks the door in, stomping in wearing heels inappropriate for such a thing, riffs playing like acrylics through a cheap wig, hardcore grooves clashing with thrash shards. This is how someone’s impossible dream gets stomped repeatedly into the ground by another person’s blast beat, and somewhere in Japan, that Daruma doll gets his last eye poked out due to secondhand trauma.
‘Last Time I’ve Seen The Sun’ steps in doing the atmospheric equivalent of a dramatic runway walk to the death dive, building all the atmosphere and melody one can expect, making you think for one precious minute that this is the ballad. But no, this is just the breath held right before ripping off the wig and bringing the knives to bear, and the band knows precisely how to build that tension before the next violence strikes.
‘Ran Out Of Options’ marks the point where the death metal takes its role entirely — vocals taken from somewhere south of the diaphragm, grooves nasty enough to worry a health inspector, feeling not like the song about shattered dreams but rather the public execution of it. Given the “toxic purpose” concept, it makes sense. Nothing screams “I would give my life to it, and it may never happen” like a vocal performance taken to the point of lethality.
‘Chicken Out’ wraps it all up with a flourish of the final act of a drag brunch gone terribly wrong, hardcore breakdowns and thrash tempos crashing against each other like two queens battling over the last spot on the stage, giving no mercy nor expecting any. It’s how the band responds to a suggestion of not letting their dream consume them by letting it consume them even more, putting it on tape, on stage, on display for us to enjoy.
Mixed and mastered by Charles Toshio, known for his CV listing hit lists of the bands made for making your neighbors call the police, Things I Want sounds honed to perfection, sharp as a stiletto blade, every riff polished to cut. The problem is exactly that ambition of theirs expressed in the music — four tracks is not much space to showcase their evolution, and by halfway through the record, ideas trip over their hemline, thrash, hardcore, and death metal fighting to voguing in the span of three minutes before someone new crashes the party. It’s a young band’s problem. The musical equivalent of trying to order everything on the menu at once because one is not sure when one will be able to eat again.
Still, as an introduction card for the first Colombian band ever booked by Wacken and Obscene Extreme, it does its job and does it well. It’s vicious, it’s fabulous, its makeup is running down its face by the third track, and it never once stops being itself — hardcore for metal heads, metal for hardcore kids, camp enough to make violence exciting.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Things I Want ft Speed
02. Last Time I’ve Seen The Sun
03. Ran Out Of Options
04. Chicken Out
LINKS:
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