Album Review: Poison Idea

Confuse & Conquer (Southern Lord)

[HARDCORE PUNK] Poison Idea is too often neglected in discussions of seminal American hardcore acts, which might be due to the fact that the band waited 10 years to make its masterpiece, 1990's Feel the Darkness. But it has managed a rare and remarkable feat: releasing at least one very good album in every decade of its existence. The Portland band keeps the streak alive with Confuse & Conquer, its first LP since 2006's Latest Will and Testament, which functioned as both a comeback album and an epitaph for longtime guitarist Tom "Pig Champion" Roberts, who passed away before the record's release. While Confuse & Conquer is padded with unfortunate digressions into midtempo barroom rock ("Hypnotic") and country ("Dead Cowboy"), the rest of it is a raging triumph that splits the difference between Black Flag's splenetic blasts and Discharge's proto-thrash. Which is what Poison Idea has always been so good at, and what Poison Idea will probably always be so good at. Here's to another 35 years of this beautiful and bitter noise. 

SEE IT: Poison Idea plays Dante's, 350 W Burnside St., with the Derelicts and the Exacerbators, on Saturday, May 23. 9 pm. $13. 21+.

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