I never really got on with Poison the Well's third album, You Come Before You, but I think that's mainly because I left it far too late to hear it. Tear From the Red was huge and I was into from the off; The Opposite of December and Distance Only Makes the Heart Grow Fonder were heavier but I was into them too. It helped that I heard all those albums within a little over a year of each other (and that that year was 2003, a good time to be a fan of Poison the Well). I also got this 10" single of Ghostchant that year for £3 in Selectadisc London, the day we went to see Deftones play Wembley Arena (for the first time) and also the day I got my Aeroplane Flies High boxset. It was an ok single, but didn't grab me like some of the songs on Tear From the Red. There's very little memorable about it - I've literally just played it and couldn't really tell you much about it.
What probably didn't help was that the day I bought this was also about a week before I started university, where I was introduced to all sorts of new bands - in the first few months alone, some Americans in my halls introduced me to Hum and Black Eyes; these were exciting times and Poison the Well definitely got left behind. In fact, it'd be 2006 before I finally bought a copy of You Come Before You (a cheap cd purchase in the HMV in Sydney, just days after I'd found my surprisingly rare copy of Hum's You'd Prefer An Astronaut on vinyl). Australian summer, combined with being a few years older were not the right conditions for enjoying Poison the Well's metalcore. Moreover, it felt like they'd done away with the unexpected acoustic guitars and shameless emo that made Tear From the Red so interesting; similarly, there were none of the hooks or breakdowns that made the earlier stuff fun too. And, like that, I pretty much stopped being a Poison the Well fan. I still play Tear From the Red from time to time, but not very often at all.
Anyway, there are two other songs here: Midair Love Message, which has some strong blast beats but not much else, and a demo of Sticks and Stones Never Made Sense from Tear From the Red, which is just a scrappy version of the album take (I know that's what demos are, but usually ones that get released and a bit more interesting). It's not one of the more interesting records in my collection, but for £3 you can't really complain. Red vinyl, numbered (#1018, out of 2000 it seems).
Format: 10"
Tracks: 3
Cost: £3 new
Bought: Selectadisc, London
When: 19/09/03
Colour: Red
Etching: none
mp3s: none
