The Poison

The Poison, released by Visible Noise on 3 October 2005, is the debut album — the record four men from Bridgend in south Wales finally made in their seventh year of playing together. What it settled was the ratio between screaming and singing. Matt Tuck tears his throat open in one line and sings the next one wide and clear, while the two guitars — his and Michael "Padge" Paget's — lay harmonies learned from Iron Maiden and Metallica across a metalcore chug. Track four, "Tears Don't Fall", is where that design lands hardest, and twenty years on it is still the centre of the set. Four singles came from it: "4 Words (To Choke Upon)", "Suffocating Under Words of Sorrow (What Can I Do)", "All These Things I Hate (Revolve Around Me)" and "Tears Don't Fall". The band took Best British Newcomer at the 2005 Kerrang! Awards, and on the strength of this one record played Download, Reading and Leeds, and Summer Sonic in Japan. BMG Japan released the Japanese edition on 26 October as BVCQ-24021, adding live recordings of "Room 409" and "Spit You Out" for fifteen tracks. A twentieth-anniversary edition arrived on 29 November 2024, and in the same year the band's channel put up a 4K version of "Tears Don't Fall" and an HD version of "Hand of Blood".