Having taken in one of the initial stops of Poison The Well‘s initial “You Come Before You” 20th anniversary shows in California this past weekend, Greg Puciato (Better Lovers, The Black Queen, ex-The Dillinger Escape Plan, etc.) reflected on his longtime friendship with the band, and their past rivalry.
As Puciato tells it, many of the bands in the scene had been attempting to upstage each other, even while sharing the same bill back in the early 2000s. Puciato also reflects on several tours The Dillinger Escape Plan and Poison The Well undertook together.
Here’s what he had to say on the matter:
“Got nearly emotional for a second last night, and smiling nearly the whole time, watching some of my oldest friends in this music shit play in front of a sold out crowd of 2000 singing every word. Insanely good to see @poisonthewellofficial looking victorious and sounding and looking better than ever.
Back in 2003, there was a sort of unspoken(and sometimes spoken) friendly competition between the bigger bands of the overall “scene” that all of our bands were in, as we were all getting so much bigger so fast and beginning to get random slivers of attention from the larger mainstream rock/metal world. All feeling like young hot shot rookies of a rapidly snowballing scene. All of that energy sorta peaked around the same time when we did the “Take Action Tour” in the fall of ‘03. @18v_official was also on that tour, and the three of us were all trying to steal the night every night. We’d end up doing a couple of really long European tours with PTW over the next half decade, one of them being 49 days with only five days off, that we still joke about today.
Talking to @jeffrey_moreira_ , @chrishornbrookdrums , Ryan, and @hartagram together afterwards, having become good friends (and collaborator w/ Chris) with all of them ever since that tour, was a really cool moment. We’ve all gotten to where we each are in our individual lives today, successful and healthy down our own separate paths, through our own challenges and trials and highs and lows, in what now feels like a confusingly dense blink of an eye from being those young men from 20 years ago trying to tear each others faces off every night. You could feel that energy from a lot of the crowd too, something about being in a room full of people, many of whom never saw it then, but many who did. The ones who were around then, there’s an unspoken connection just knowing that we’re all still here, onstage or off, in whatever the fuck this life thing is, in the same room for a night because of one common denominator.
The longer I go the more meaningful all of this shit becomes, and things feel more and more celebratory. Here’s to Poison the Well.”
As Puciato mentioned above, Poison The Well drummer Chris Hornbrook has since become a frequent musical companion and collaborator, with the pair often working together on Puciato‘s solo endeavors.
Poison The Well‘s immediate touring plans run as follows.
“You Come Before You” 20th anniversary shows:
01/12 Chicago, IL – The Metro (feat. SeeYouSpaceCowboy & Volcano)
01/19 Brooklyn, NY – Warsaw (feat. Indecision, Skycamefalling &Excide)
01/20 Brooklyn, NY – Warsaw (feat. Indecision, Skycamefalling &Excide)
Additional Poison The Well shows:
01/13 Chicago, IL – Cobra Lounge (feat. SeeYouSpaceCowboy)
01/18 Brooklyn, NY – Saint Vitus (feat. LaMacchia)
