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Poison the Well and Further Seems Forever take action
BY SEAN RICHARDSON
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Now in its third year, the punked-up Take Action Tour has established itself as one of the highest-profile charity efforts in rock. Organized by the SoCal indie label Sub City, the outing will once again raise funds and awareness for the National Hopeline Network (1-800-SUICIDE). Previous performers have included current buzz bands Thrice and Thursday; next Thursday, when this year’s model hits the Palladium in Worcester, underground favorites Poison the Well, the Dillinger Escape Plan, Further Seems Forever, and Eighteen Visions will share the bill. What’s more, Sub City has just released Take Action! Volume 3, a 45-track compilation that features some of the best young bands on the punk circuit, retails for less than $10, and also benefits Hopeline. Of the four bands playing the Massachusetts Take Action stop, Miami mosh maniacs Poison the Well are the ones with the most mainstream exposure. Their new You Come Before You is their third overall and their first for Atlantic, whom they signed with after a successful stint on the renowned New Jersey hardcore label Trustkill. The group put their major-label money to good use by traveling to Sweden to record the disc with Pelle Henricsson and Eskil Lovstrom, producers best known for their work with the groundbreaking hardcore act Refused. Although Poison the Well have been paying their dues on the all-ages punk scene for the better part of the past five years, You Come Before You falls at the metal end of the screamo spectrum. On the first single, "Apathy Is a Cold Body," the group chase the middle ground between beauty and despair with a moody arrangement that never quite settles into a chorus. The tension between frontman Jeffrey’s enraged howl and his tender croon recalls Deftones, as does the band’s penchant for haunting dissonance. At the end of the song, the guitars crack a smile while Jeffrey launches into a majestic coda: "You see what you want to see." With mainstream metal in transition and Deftones themselves struggling on the charts, You Come Before You is anything but an easy cash-in: trendy emo gestures aside, Poison the Well’s thorny arrangements are better suited for the mosh pit than for the radio. Hooks are few and far between, but the dynamic range is stunning: "Zombies Are Good for Your Health" is a sarcastic three-punch knockout, and "Sounds like the End of the World" sets the deranged thoughts of a criminal awaiting trial to lullaby guitars. On the vicious "Loved Ones" and the hero-worship anthem "For a Bandaged Iris," Jeffrey’s lyrics are both more literal and more sincere than his song titles suggest. The band go back to basics on the homicidal narrative "Crystal Lake," which ends the disc with a hardcore beatdown worthy of Hatebreed. The odd men out on the Massachusetts Take Action bill are Further Seems Forever, who value melody over aggression and don’t have any screaming in their songs. Sonic differences aside, they’re tight with the headliners: most of Further got their start in the Miami hardcore band Strongarm, who had already released two albums on the stellar Christian punk label Tooth & Nail when Poison the Well got together. When Strongarm decided to go emo, they hooked up with new frontman Chris Carrabba and changed their name to Further Seems Forever. Carrabba eventually left to become a rock star under the name Dashboard Confessional, but not before appearing on Further’s debut, The Moon Is Down. The new Further album, How To Start a Fire, is their second for Tooth & Nail and their first with new frontman Jason Gleason, who came to the band from the Minneapolis indie-metal crew Affinity. It’s also their first to crack the Billboard 200, which means they’ve actually become more popular with Gleason than they were with Carrabba. That mystery gets cleared up with one listen to the college-radio hit "The Sound," an arena-size emo anthem that turns a head-scratching run-on sentence into a fist-pumping, harmony-laden chorus. As for Gleason, his authoritative wail makes me wish more punk bands had a vocal coach to list in the liner notes the way he does. On How To Start a Fire, Further prove themselves worthy heirs to the angular, introspective legacy of Sunny Day Real Estate and Jawbox. Sandwiched between "The Sound" and "Against My Better Judgment," another radio-ready rocker with an even better performance from Gleason, is the loungy "A Blank Page Empire," which tries to shake its melancholy with an uplifting chorus but never quite does. For a Christian emo band, they rarely get specific about either God or girls, focusing instead on dense guitar elegies and Gleason’s oblique spirituality. These guys take their music seriously, and emo fans will want to do the same. Poison the Well and Further Seems Forever perform as part of the Take Action Tour 2003 next Thursday, September 18, at the Palladium in Worcester; call (508) 797-9696.
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