By Andrew Bansal
July 8th 2016, Glass House, Pomona CA: Following three East Coast shows in June, Miami/Ft. Lauderdale, Florida post-hardcore group Poison The Well played three back-to-back Southern California shows in July, including a headline gig at the Glass House in Pomona last Friday July 8th, with support acts Strife and La Bella. After a five-year hiatus, Poison The Well played two reunion shows in 2015 with no further plans to perform or write new music, but are continuing on with the reunion this year, much to the delight of fans that are clearly still packing every club the band plays in. A capacity crowd awaited their arrival at the Glass House, cashing in on a chance to see the band after a long time and anticipating a performance that would prove to be worth the wait.
Even as people lined up outside the venue, they had a chance to purchase special event shirts for $25, as To Die For Clothing had a stall set up with their screen-printing equipment in place to print shirts on the spot. Doors opened at 7, and an hour later, San Gabriel Valley hardcore punk quartet La Bella took the stage, something that they were not used to, by their own admission, as they mostly play D.I.Y. shows that don’t have much of a stage. Perhaps as a result of that, they exuded a strange stage persona where they came off as very shoegazy and didn’t even face the crowd for the most part. The singer had his back facing the audience even when he was addressing them between songs, which is not something you see every day. There was a long delay in their set because of technical difficulties with the guitar, but for the short amount of time that they did play music, they received a generous response and served as a sufficiently apt opener for this event.
Next up were Strife, who have been quite the institution in Los Angeles hardcore over the past two-and-a-half decades. They blew their East Coast counterparts Madball off the stage at the Viper Room in 2015, and certainly pulled their weight here, even though on this occasion the headlining was able to prove its worth. This set by Strife embodied pure power and unabated fury, and the band succeeded in transferring their mental and physical state to the audience in attendance, as circle pits broke out and the intensity inside the Glass House was greatly raised. Whenever there is a touring hardcore act coming through town, the show is always going to be well-served to have Strife on the lineup as main support/co-headliner, because this is the kind of band that not only gets the crowd involved and sets the atmosphere to what a hardcore show should be like, but Strife truly puts their best foot forward and compels the headliner to do the same. They haven’t put out a new album since 2012, but their musicianship continues to shine on stage, and with performances like this, Strife are far from fading away or being forgotten.
Oftentimes at the Glass House, folks over 21 years of age like to migrate to the bar adjoining the main concert hall between sets. This bar has a door that opens inside the lobby of the Glass House for easy access, but at this show it only gave attendees the illusion of easy access, as once you take a few paces inside the bar, the security person on duty would yell at you for passing him without showing your ID, even though he was not positioned at the door where he should have been. It’s highly doubtful that anyone really had a problem showing him their ID if he was doing so at the point of entry instead of trying to chase people well past it. He was only making his own job more difficult, and one couldn’t help but be entertained watching him, as he finally moved to the door but ended up standing in the middle and blocking people’s path altogether.
Back to the concert hall, Poison The Well started their set promptly at 10, taking the stage in front of a completely packed Glass House floor and playing a hefty, comprehensive set spanning all five of their studio albums. They released all five albums between ’99 and 2009, a decade wherein they were hugely creative and prolific, and the sheer variety and progression in their musicianship was vastly evident in the set of songs they chose for this tour, as within this 90-minute performance, one could absorb all the wild shifts they’ve had stylistically through their career. The crowd loved every minute of it, as the mosh pit dwellers and hardcore dancers were having a great time, complete with injuries that required ambulance calls.
In every genre or sub-genre there are bands that are considered influential, while there are others that were perhaps equally important that don’t quite get the same recognition. Poison The Well could be touted as one such band that comes under the latter category, as upon attending this concert, one would come to the realization that this band’s influence is omnipresent in the hardcore/metallic hardcore/post-hardcore world. Poison The Well haven’t released an album since 2009, but with the manner in which they are cohesively performing powerful concerts such as this, the creative fire must have rekindled within them, and a new album couldn’t be out of the question.
Overall, a tremendous evening of hardcore at a venue most appropriate for it.
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Poison The Well set list:
01. Ghostchant
02. Parks and What You Meant to Me
03. Letter Thing
04. Zombies Are Good for Your Health
05. Karsey Street
06. Cinema
07. Purple Sabbath
08. Slice Paper Wrists
09. Pamplemousse
10. Artist’s Rendering of Me
11. Crystal Lake
12. You Will Not Be Welcomed
13. Botchla
14. To Mandate Heaven
15. For a Bandaged Iris
16. Nerdy