Poison The Well

Hondo Maclean have come to fuck shit up and they know how to do that pretty well, even if British audiences still need to get to know them. They’ve toured with Steve-O from Jackass alright?! So no wonder their performances are pretty mental. We’ll get to the music later, half the immensity of Hondo Maclean lies in their lunatic crazed onstage mosh rocking. Is it a Welsh thing? The Welsh pits are renowned for being heavy as fuck so maybe in Wales you have to rock like this – ON STAGE – to get any kind of point across. Or they might just be on drugs. Who cares? Thank God these guitarists are not the common shy retiring indie types you’ve seen so many times before. It's just plain metal energy – its an octopus with five arms (a pentopuss?) all doing killer signs of the beast – all carrying a different instrument and shaking it manically whilst still playing scorching metal riffs, screeching roaring vocals and constantly changing drum patterns looping in and out of about 8 different time signatures at once. That is Hondo Maclean. Unfazed by problems like dud microphones or roaring hecklers HM* are incredibly tight as a band little more than a few months old. They are not *Lost Prophets and neither are they a creature of the sea, though they do have similar studded belts – to the Lost Prophets that is, octopuses don’t wear them.

Fuck my mother!!!!“(*%”)%T Blimey! $£^”Woaaaa”%” shit! Safe… Arrrghh! Imagine a visual representation of the aforementioned words with far more movement, a lot more shouting and three hundred hungry metal kids slamming their bodies into each other at least four times a second and you have a picture of the reaction London gave Poison the Well; and all this from the very SECOND they took the stage. The stage of the Underworld – the focus of London’s metal scene for a night, hundreds of pairs of eyes poised, ingesting every moment of this beautiful beast of a band. There is no time to listen, there is only action here - devotion to a breed of rock unlike any that’s come before it. London responds with sweat, ripped shirts and broken bones, but they don’t care. They know how it’s done.

In Manchester the response is still incredible, but perhaps the more conventional, less maze-like venue leaves its audience more space to move and breathe and go less crazy. The pit is large but tired. A younger audience in Manchester is less sure of itself but still eager for PTW and prefers to watch than move. The energy in PTW is similar to Hondo Maclean but perhaps a little more controlled. Their success and recent fame have meant PTW can lead their audience and respond to its reaction. There are some truly blinding riffs here and a good mixture of roaring and vocals. Sometimes they resemble Stampin Ground playing less hardcore songs. PTW are metal, but have an eloquent edge, which may stem from their love of Coldplay, Doves, Goldfrapp and Sigur Ros. It seems odd that such a loud band should appreciate music of this kind but that’s what really sets PTW apart from other bands of its genre. Poison the Well; a ferocious band with a sympathetic heart.

New Album ‘You Come Before You’ comes out July 1st.