Excellent band, lousy audience.
The night doesn't start well unfortunately. At 8.30pm the main doors to the venue are still firmly locked and the punters are propping up the bar spreading rumours. It seems that problems with the PA system are to blame, and no one looks too hopeful that their going to hear any music tonight. Then suddenly they start sound checking and everyone breathes a collective sigh of relief. The upshot of all these problems is that Poison The Well end up playing to a seriously small audience. For some reason, the venue seem content to let all three bands play pretty much full sets, even though the first don't come on until after half nine, this strange decision means that half the crowd (the ones that have traveled from Cardiff, Bristol and further) go home after the first band.
It's a good job Poison The Well are such professionals and so imposing on stage, as TJ's hasn't seen an audience this small in a long while. Because of this lack of bodies the atmosphere is practically non existent; half of the crowd seem to just stand there and stare at the stage. Those that have stuck around seem to be old school fans of the more metal sounding first album and as a consequence, there's a muted response to the brilliant material from second album "You Come Before You" which is a real shame as their set tonight consists mostly of tracks from this release; luckily for us fans of the second album they do still hammer out brilliantly angry performances of these more melodic tunes.
The band does manage to fit in a few new tracks from their forthcoming album "Versions" which, surprisingly, seem to go down pretty well with everyone. The new tracks are definitely well worth holding out for; at times gut wrenchingly heavy, but at the same time, more intricate , melodic and varied than previous releases – things are looking up for the new album. Poison The Well is an excellent live band, and even though they do their best tonight, there is the feeling, (obviously through no fault of the musicians themselves) that because of the lack of atmosphere something is missing. After playing what appears to be a cut down set, the band go off stage at about midnight without coming back for an encore, and who can blame them. They seem to be wasted on the crowd, and even though there's a decent amount of applause at the end, the night was a bit disappointing all round.