Poison's first demo is absolute orgy of death metal noise at it's most primitive. It makes the embryonic early work of Sodom and Hellhammer sound like Mozart by comparison. There is some contention as to just how many tracks appeared on the original version. The Metal Archives site insists 13 tracks appeared in it's first release, but future versions reduced it to the four tracks listed on Rate Your Music.com. Suffice to say that in any case this is damn raw stuff, though not quite as awful sound wise as legend would have it. Essentially we have alternately very fast/doomy material, in generally terrible recording conditions, the drums far in the backdrop, vocals up front and too loud. But the riffs and songs (when the structures can be glimpsed) are not all that terrible, although I'm being kind when I say the vocals and discernible lyrics are crap. At this point only the sickest of the sick called themselves Poison fans, and even the most underground fanzines dismissed the band as total garbage. But metal never forgets, even when it possibly should, thus the band's cult remains among us.
Bestial Death (Demo, 1985)
I admit Germany's Poison are something of an obsession for me. Mainly because they were so reviled in their day, sometimes for the qaulity of their music, sometimes because they were playing some of the most over the top high-speed death metal anyone had every heard in the middle eighties. This demo is a huge improvement over their debut demo in just about every sense. And while it still sounds like a total non-studio basment job, everything is a lot clearer. Admittedly, things could be a lot more clever in a performance sense, but even here there's a greater desire to write quality material going on. And the tempos are more varied as well, the band handling evil mid-tempo grooves as well as high speed blasting. The old school metal feel that the riffs of "Satan Commands" and "Wake The Dead" possess cannot be denied, no matter how rough the sound may be. Now a slight warning is in order. The most recent download of I have of this seems to have MUCH better sound than the first, so I don't know if there's multiple rips floating around out there. Get the one from Lockjaw blog if you choose to download, because that's what I'm working from here.
Awakening of the Dead (Demo, 1986)
I'm not so sure about this release's entry on Rate Your Music.com as an album. As far as I always knew it was the band's third (non-live) demo. At any rate, it's mostly composed of earlier material, some of the songs being delivered in shorter, longer or live treatments. It marks the first appearance of "Yog Sothoth," perhaps the band's best song ever, and an excellent run through of "Wake The Dead." The live stuff present is pretty poorly recorded, but that only accounts for two tracks, the rest of the stuff being presented with the booming, echoing vocals and thick as mud guitars the band were becoming renown for possessing. Next up for the band was their pinnacle, the Into The Abyss demo, which would go onto be pressed on vinyl years later. The cult endures...if you're a serious death metal fan, especially of the early stuff, this primordial ooze is highly worthwhile.
Into the Abyss (Demo, 1987)
For years Poison was reviled as being perhaps the world's worst recorded death metal band. As early as 1984 these uncouth gentlemen were putting out demo tapes that sounded, as one reviewer put it in Blackthorn magazine, "like a washing machine out of order." The sound quality on their tapes made early Death demos sound like Dark Side Of The Moon by comparison. But by the time of this EP, they'd tightened up their sound, written some very heavy and mildly involved material, and gotten their singer Uli to adopt a raw but pleasing death growl. The material is similar to early Morbid Angel, though not quite as unique. However the whole thing has that "obscure" elder death metal sound down pat, which immediately makes this recording right up my alley. Fans of really heavy thrash metal verging into full on death will surely eat this one up.
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