Tropic Ripe

Oh my god it’s finally here! It’s here! Poison the Well! The Tropic Rot! Eeeee [with hands flapping at nipple height]!! It’s not like I haven’t been pining over the release of this record or anything. Not like I haven’t stayed up at night viciously you tubing for precious in-studio clips. Not like I haven’t had their myspace page open nervously clicking refresh hoping for ANY news…be it updates from touring, new photos of the studio set up so I could geek the hell out of their mic set up and stuff, or little factoids for me to store in my vast bank of ALWAYS relevant musical knowledge (which occupies corners of my brain which used to hold useless information like how to formulate coherent sentences, act in professional settings, or function as a successful engineer).

REGARDLESS! It was all NOT in vain! I now have, quite literally in my hand, my copy of the newest release from Poison the Well entitled The Tropic Rot. AHHHHHGGGGG!!

What the title means? No idea. But they’re from Florida (and not completely useless human beings…who knew Florida had ANYthing to offer?) so maybe it has something to do with that? Don’t care. The music! If you couldn’t already tell by my rant of disjointed nothingness…IT’S EXCELLENT! Let me dissect:

As Versions progressed from You Come Before You, The Tropic Rot left the comforts (?) of the winters in Scandinavia (where Versions and YCBY were recorded) and took Poison the Well to sunny Garden Grove, California to the studios of producer Steve Evetts (Dillinger Escape Plan, Every Time I Die, etc). Under his watchful eye and with his hands off approach, Evetts and the band crafted a record that built off the successes and innovations of their previous recordings under the more than talented knob-turning hands of Eskil Lövström and Pelle Henricsson and pushed the envelope of what it is to be an eleven year old hardcore band in 2009.

Sometimes when you listen to a record, what you end up hearing isn’t necessarily the talent of the band itself but rather the talent of the producer. Look at Bleeding Through’s most recent release Declaration produced by Devin Townshend…Case. And. Point. When the band is lacking in certain aspects (be it song writing, song structure, or things generally outside the actual band member’s abilities to play their instruments), it’s the job of the producer to step in and gently (or brutally) push a band in the “right” direction…please use big obnoxious finger quotation marks around the word RIGHT. RIGHT is defined to be, in this case, the artistic vision of what the producer deems a successful song or collection of songs given the current musical trends of the times. Blood has literally been shed over this subject. I heard once Art Garfunkel knifed a producer for saying his chorus wasn’t catchy enough. I’ll verify it on Wikipedia. But I digress.

One of the more interesting things I immediately noticed in this record was the influence of the band on the producer, rather than the other way around. Steve Evetts’ mixes usually come out sounding pretty conventional with respect to guitar tones, drum tones, vocal tones, etc. His snares are usually sampled to even out each stroke (meaning he’ll overdub a second snare drum hit on top of each “real” snare drum hit…this normalizes out the consistency of each snare hit), his guitars are usually pretty conventionally balanced between crunchy distortion, beefy gain, and some noise suppression for the electrical hum/fuzz in the guitar, and the vocals are usually pretty clean. To his credit, the mixes always sound good. Conventional, but good. I think where he excels is in his ability to take bands with a more alternative musical styling (like metal and hardcore) and subtly nudge them towards a more globally appealing product. Usually you can listen to a collection of records by the same producer and hear similar tones and similar song structures. On The Tropic Rot, what you hear instead is Poison the Well (PTW) pushing Evetts to use more bluesy tones, stripped down drums, raw guitars, alternate vocal processing (like putting distortion on sung lines among other stuff). Whether it was an intention of PTW to come in and “direct” Evetts to lay off the gain/distortion or whether it was a fortunate accident, the tones and sounds on this record are, first of all, atypical to Steve Evetts’ mixes, and second of all, fantastic! If anything, it’ll be a feather in his cap! An arrow in his quiver! A…um…another rock in his sling? Another missile in his arsenal? You get it. It’s proving that he can not only be accommodating but versatile.

One more quick note on the tone before I move on. I always listen to PTW and think of them as being heavily influenced in old southern blues. But I couldn’t really put my finger on exactly why I thought that. But I figured it out. The tones on their records, at very least the last three major releases, have all used VERY bluesy tones…more so in The Tropic Rot and Versions. The music is still heavy and raucous, but if you solo out the guitars and played through whatever amps they use, the tones of the guitars are very reminiscent of blues and jazz. But when played hard, the amps’ tubes naturally distort (as opposed to solid state pedals or forcing a bunch of gained overdrive) in the way a blues guitar would. Interesting stuff.

So I’ve discussed how the band successfully influenced the producer…But Matthew, how did the PRODUCER influence the BAND?! I’m dying to know! Please tell me? Well okay children, sit tight.

Listen to the structure of the songs on this album versus the previous two. You Come Before You and Versions were very experimental and more traditionally hardcore in nature. By this I mean that in some cases there weren’t really defined choruses and versus but rather repeating parts. Breakdowns or bridges seemed to be the focus of most of the songs, like the loooong bridge in the song “Letter Thing” on Versions featuring the wicked awesome slide guitar. Longer melodic passages spaced out the tone and pace of the record. On their newest release, there are still creative bits that exhibit the talents of the band nicely. I would go as far as to say Steve Evetts’ contribution or influence is actually pretty minimal…which is awesome! The guy has a tendency to let his musicians write and play what they want to write. What it seems that he does is take the parts they write and help arrange them in a fashion that both makes the song interesting when the parts aren’t by keeping the more uninteresting phrases short and creates space for the more interesting passages by helping arrange the parts around it…the jury is out whether that made sense to anybody else but me.

The beauty of this CD is that the end result is a record full of songs written and performed by Poison The Well as Poison The Well would want to be heard. They’ve taken tactics they’ve learned from other producers and records and blended them with the subtle styling of a new producer to mold and refine how they want their band to be heard and understood.

Good job boys! Thanks for not disappointing!

Guitarist Ryan Primack channeling the patented Angus Young rock and roll face.