Miami, FL · metalcore · post-hardcore

Poison the Well

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Florida metalcore that kept mutating — each record noticeably stranger and more textured than the last, a blueprint for the genre's art wing.

Poison the Well began in 1997 in Coral Springs, Florida, when guitarist Ryan Primack and vocalist Aryeh Lehrer formed a band called Doubting Thomas, later renamed An Acre Lost before settling on Poison the Well and relocating to Miami. Primack and drummer Chris Hornbrook remain the only members from that period still involved.

Their early work paired hardcore aggression with sung melodic passages, an approach widely imitated in the years that followed, but the group rarely repeated itself: later albums leaned into dissonance, unusual textures and slower, heavier atmospheres. Their albums have sold more than 300,000 copies in the United States.

Jeffrey Moreira became the band's long-serving vocalist, appearing on all six studio albums, and fronted a lineup that shifted considerably around him, including early bassists Landsman, Michael Gordillo and Javier Van Huss.

The band was originally active until 2010, then reformed for shows in 2015 and 2016 before a 2020 reunion became permanent. That lineup eventually recorded Peace in Place, its first new studio album in seventeen years.

The band's records moved between independent and major-label homes, and their catalogue is often cited as a bridge between the genre's straightforward beginnings and its more experimental, art-leaning wing. Live, they draw from across that catalogue.

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metalcorepost-hardcore