It’s always exciting when you’re awarded the chance to speak with someone you genuinely admire and whose music or film has affected you in some way. With songs titles like “Crystal Lake” and “Zombies Are Good for Your Health,” I always knew Poison the Well, or at least singer Jeffrey Moreira had some appreciation for our beloved genre. That connection along with my own love for terror flicks and the band’s extreme honest and genuine sound built them into an outfit I would always follow and eagerly await new music from. My hunch was solidified on their DVD, TEAR FROM THE ROAD, in which the front man, amidst bellowing out ferocious roars, was sporting a shirt displaying the poster for the slasher classic, MANIAC.

Moreira, along with eldest cohorts Ryan Primack (guitar) and Chris Hornbrook (drums) and the newest members of the team, Bradley Grace (bass) and Bradley Clfford (guitar) are releasing their fifth studio album this week, THE TROPIC ROT (order it here). This latest record proves that Poison the Well are true legends of the metal/hardcore scene that continue to progress and get better each time out. Moreira took a good chunk of time out to speak with me about the band, horror movies, cheese steaks and a host of things in between.

FANGORIA: Thanks so much for taking the time out, this is awesome, I’ve been listening to you guys forever.

Jeff: Awesome, thanks. I’m a very big Fangoria Magazine fan, I used to like attempt to draw, back in the day when I was like 15, 16, the prosthetics in the magazine. They would sell these masks and chests and stuff with organs popping out of them. I’m a big horror movie fan too, so it’s one of the things I use to keep in touch with horror movies that come out. My band mates are kind of a bummer ‘cause they never want to watch any horror movies with me, but it’s all right. I watch ‘em by myself.

Fango: I’ve always felt you guys put a lot of thought into your album titles. What is the THE TROPIC ROT in reference to, is there an overlying theme on the album?

Jeff: For me, instead of just naming it for whatever the experience was making the record, which is what I usually do, I wanted to get a name that would kind of just sum up our career in general as a band, and I thought that THE TROPIC ROT was pretty suitable for that. Because your tropical place, which can be anything- immediately, when I tell anybody the name of the record, they’re like “Oh yeah, Florida,” but it doesn’t have to do with Florida necessarily, it could be like, a tropical place which is like your place, your escape to feel good, and that’s our band. And then the rot is the bad side of it, so it was kind of a thing where it’s awesome to be in a band and do this and you get to play music and stuff, but there’s a bad side as well, and it’s not always in Poison The Well, I think in any band, you have your ups and downs and I think THE TROPIC ROT, was at least for me, the perfect title for the record, for what I was trying to say.



Fango: If the title is in reference to being in Poison the Well, you guys have been around for a while now and you’re pioneers and legendary in the scene. Not that you guys are old, but you’re definitely aging gracefully. In hardcore, metal and punk it seems like that’s something that’s really hard to do for bands. I’m not sure if you’ve heard it, but I feel like also with the new Alexisonfire record; that album and THE TROPIC ROT are really showing people how to get older in the scene, still keep the same urgency and energy level, but progress, not try to recapture your older sound. Do you find that hard to do, keep moving forward?

Jeff: I think for us, it’s always been putting out an honest record and doing what it is we feel is honest. We don’t really sit around and think about what other people want to hear, we don’t think about those things when we put out our records, we just go with it. Our experiences on tour and what we deal with in life all come through in our music. We love being in a band, and we obviously want to put out better records every time we put out a new record, so I guess there’s an urgency in that, but it’s not contrived. Not that we don’t care what other people think of our music, but when we’re writing it, we think that us being honest with ourselves and making sure that we do the best possible record to our ability is more important at that moment. I haven’t heard the new Alexisonfire, but I really like CRISIS, and it makes me proud to hear something like that. Most of the time you hear about older, older bands and they just get worse and worse and worse, ‘cause they get more jaded or don’t try as hard anymore. For us, we just want to play music man, you know, we just try to be really honest with our music and I think that’s why it keeps that energy up.

Fango: Poison the Well hasn’t gotten jaded in any way. You’ve gotten better, your voice from OPPOSITE OF DECEMBER has grown and adding all the instruments you did on VERSIONS, everything feels fresh.

Jeff: It’s like a fine wine, except we just get uglier. I’m pumped; it’s very hard to be in a band for this long. I know we have, lot of what I keep hearing is, this revolving door of members, but what people don’t, maybe people do understand is that Poison The Well has always been me, Chris and Ryan and so then it’s always been the same people making the music, it’s just that the people who’ve stepped in and played bass or guitar, weren’t in the band. They didn’t write with us or anything, they were just tour people. The people we have in the band now that helped us write our record, the two Brads, they’re in Poison the Well, but when people say, “Poison The Well’s had 23 members,” I say we haven’t. I don’t consider some of those people ever having been in our band, they were just people who came on tour to play bass because we didn’t have a bass player, so it’s really cool when you can meet people that you respect and write music with and you’re friends. They’re like my brothers.

And we’ve been around this long, it doesn’t happen nowadays, you see bands and they get really big for a second and then they disappear, ‘cause there’s no experience. I’m not saying they don’t work as hard, I don’t know what the difference is. But back in the day, if you’re a hardcore band, you had to tour like crazy, for years, before anybody knew who you were. It wasn’t as big as it is now. I don’t know if that effects how it is now where you can be a band and put your songs on Myspace and then you’re automatically this Myspace hype band, yet you’ve never been on tour, and then you go on tour for a few months and you’re like, “Oh, I hate these dudes.” I think it’s a pretty big accomplishment to be in a band this long.

Fango: Where did you record?

Jeff: We recorded THE TROPIC ROT in California with Steve Evetts, the last two, YOU COME BFORE YOU and VERSIONS, we recorded in Sweden. So it was cool, the two producers are completely different people. With THE TROPIC ROT, we had less time. I think we recorded the record in less than a month, whereas, in VERSIONS we went to Sweden for 3 months, recorded, came home, wrote more songs, then went back to Sweden for another 2 months. I prefer not to have as much time to record because you can’t second guess anything, which we do a lot. It was a really different experience, recording this time. It was more like recording back when we did TEAR FROM THE RED and OPPOSITE and I think it helped the record a lot not to have all the second guessing and changing stuff all the time. It was different in a good way, not to say the other experiences were bad, cause YOU COME and VERSIONS, recording those records was awesome. This time felt like, back in the day, and it’s always nice to feel like back in the day.

Fango: With the TROPIC ROT being your fifth album, plus the EP’s from earlier this year, how hard is it to pick a set list each night?

Jeff: Dude it’s so hard with as many records as we have. It’s hard because we still play all old songs, we still play stuff off of OPPOSITE, we always play at least one or two songs off of everything, but there’s always somebody at the show, who’s like, “Man you didn’t play this song and you didn’t play this song.” For us, we only have like 35 minutes which is really hard and what we started doing is, I really don’t talk at all during our set. We get criticisms about that sometimes, where people are like, “Oh, you know, they didn’t even talk to us, they just came out and played, they didn’t really say anything to the crowd.” The reason for that is that we’re trying to get as much music into the set as possible, without too much banter, cause I’ll acknowledge that they’re there one time in the set and say thank you for coming, but the reason that we do it like that is so we can get as many songs as we can in; so nobody leaves bummed out that we didn’t play a song they wanted to hear. It’s pretty difficult. Also, being in a band like our band, a little more aggressive, you don’t want to roll up there and play like 2 hours either, that’s a little bit overkill; watching a bunch of dudes jumping around and some big ogre screaming, and singing at you the entire time, so I think about an hour is pretty good. Gonna get even more difficult, the more records we put out, we’ll figure it out I guess.

Fango: How’s the 10 for $10 tour going?

Jeff: We just did a mini thing with Silverstein and The Sleeping, we’re in Philly, we have two days off and we have a show in Connecticut, and then our first show on 10 for $10 starts in Philly on the 9th. I think it’s gonna be awesome, it’s cheap. I think now, the way the economy is and there’s so many bands going. It’s kind of nice to be able to go to a show and see a bunch of bands for $10, it’s pretty sweet. There’s a bunch of really cool bands I want to see, I know Vision of Disorder’s playing and I’ve liked them since I was like 15 years old. I want to say it’s diverse because Poison The Well is on it and we don’t really sound like any of the other bands, I think it’s cool. I think there will be a good mixture of kids. The only thing that I’m a little worried about is I’m pretty sure there’s going to be a lot of fights.

Fango: Well it’s interesting you bring that up, because it seems the amount of kids who only go to shows to fight has grown in recent years and I was wondering how bands feel about the whole situation.

Jeff: We definitely don’t like it, I don’t think it’s cool because regardless of whoever the two people are fighting, maybe they were looking for it and they were there to fight each other; or they just pick some innocent person who ended up doing something and you beat them up, that sucks. On top of that, you ruined the show, because we stop. If there’s a fight, we stop playing. The last thing I want to do is be the Rocky scene for two dudes who are beating the shit out of each other. So, it just sucks, it’s been a little bit more chill with our shows, like when we headline and stuff. Occasionally there will be a fight, hasn’t really happened that often. But we did Warped Tour in 2007, and it was kind of embarrassing for Poison The Well, at least for me, because every day there was a huge fight and we would stop every day, and it just seemed that on the main stage when we were playing, we were the only band where multiple fights would break out every day. And I feel like it gives our band a bad name because people just associate like, “Oh yeah, I remember seeing Poison The Well and people just fought the entire time and I don’t want to go see Poison The Well live because I may get punched in the face.” That’s not what we’re about, we play aggressive music and it’s heavy and whatever, but at the same time we’re not playing to help people beat the crap out of each other. It sucks man, it’s always been like that. I’m not saying it’s hardcore, you can go to a metal show and it’ll be like that. Some people are just agro when they’re listening to heavy music and say, “Alright. I’m going to go to the show and I’m going to fight somebody,” and don’t think about it.

Fango: I think a lot of that sometimes has to do with something like Warped Tour and there’s so many different types of crowds, because I remember, when you guys headlined at the Knitting Factory like two years ago, that felt like really kind of old school, there weren’t a lot of fights and everyone was just there to sing along and have a good time. I think it always depends on the type of bands and the diversity. I know Terror is playing and I feel like that might be a recipe for fighting.

Jeff: Yea and I know for a fact those dudes, I don’t think they think it’s awesome that kids fight, but it just brings those types of kids. It sucks for a band like them, they’re an awesome band, but they have a reputation for bringing kids out that bash each other’s brains in. I mean, you can only just be chill about it, being really aggressive towards kids who are fighting becomes fuel for them to just want to fight more. If kids start fighting, I’ll try to cool it down by trying to be a funny guy or make myself look stupid so maybe they’ll laugh at me and forget that they’re fighting. It’s just one of those things, but definitely when you have that many different types of crowds at a show, they’re gonna butt heads for sure.

Fango: Just want to move along and start asking you about some of your favorite horror movies and what you love about and what inspires you in horror?

Jeff: Dude, I’m been obsessed with horror. I was a big zombie fan since I was 14. My mom actually, when we were growing up, my mom was a young mom, so I don’t think it’s bad, sometimes I think about it and think it’s a little fucked up, but we would hang out and my mom would just rent horror movies, SLEEPAWAY CAMP or DR. GIGGLES, or something like that. Obviously those movies aren’t scary anymore but to a kid my age at the time, 7-8 year old kid, watching these super gory horror movies and my mom was cool with it, she just didn’t think, “this may traumatize my kid.” We actually saw a movie, I can’t remember what it was, all I remember is, I think the movie had to do with this girl who was babysitting these kids and the kids are evil, and somebody puts their eye through a hole and one of the kids shoots an arrow into the person’s eye.

Fango: That is BLOODY BIRTHDAY!

Jeff: Is it that movie?

Fango: Yea, it’s about three little kids who were all born on the same day during an eclipse and they go on a killing spree on their birthday.

Jeff: Yea, that scene traumatized me dude. Seriously, every once in a while, like when I’m sleeping, I’ll think something’s really close to my eye, and I can’t sleep unless I put a blanket over my face, so I have this weird thing. The first time I saw the scene in ZOMBIE, the Fulci movie, where the lady’s taking a shower and the zombie grabs her head and pulls it toward the splinter and it goes into her eye and rips the side of her face off; anything that has to do with eyes, or things going into eyes, completely freaks me out. So yea, I think that my love for horror movies stems from my mother scaring the crap out of me when I was a little kid. I got really heavy into zombies, Fulci, Romero. Bava didn’t really do zombies, but all the Italian directors, I was super into. The worse the movie was, the more pumped I was on it. I still own pretty much every single zombie movie on VHS. Right now, last movie I saw that impressed me was MARTYRS.

Fango: MARTYRS was great.

Jeff: Dude, I thought it was cool, I was a little weirded out in the beginning, I thought, “ahh, another HOSTEL,” but it turned into so much more, I think it’s a great multi-genre movie, I don’t think it’s just a horror movie.

Fango: It’s really exhausting, but it’s really thoughtful and that ending is great.

Jeff: Dude, it’s amazing. You know what pumps me up even more, is that the French are kicking ass right now in horror.

Fango: Have you seen INSIDE yet?

Jeff: Yes I have, A L’INTERIEUR? That movie was fucking awesome, it was so fucking brutal that I was like, “I don’t know if I can watch this again, right now.” It’s a really good movie, it was so brutal for the sake of being brutal, but it’s such a good movie. For me, it’s that horror/slasher/gore films, totally didn’t exist in French cinema forever. They have dark comedies and all that and I guess you could call the fire extinguisher scene in IRREVERSIBLE like a gore scene, but that’s only…

Fango: Yea, they just had more erotic vampire kind of things in the 70’s.

Jeff: Yea, but I mean, now there’s like HIGH TENSION. It’s good, I thought it was awesome until the ending, it was a little bit reaching you know what I mean. I didn’t expect it, which a lot of my friends make fun of me. They’re like, “You watch all these horror movies, don’t tell me you didn’t expect that to happen.” But I didn’t expect it to happen because I wouldn’t assume that they would even attempt to try and do that because it doesn’t work.

Fango: I think what I’ve settled on to make myself like the ending, is just that the whole movie is just her concept of what happened, it’s nowhere near the real truth, it’s just her telling the story and her warped vision of how it all went down.

Jeff: Which I agree, but the first time I watched it, I was a little like, “eh.” Good movie, though and that little Hot Rod or whatever it was she was driving, was awesome. Did you see, what about FRONTIERS?

Fango: I actually really, really liked FRONTIERS.

Jeff: I did too, man, I got into a huge argument with my friend about it because he was all like, “Yea, whatever, it’s not original.” And yea, there were elements of TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, maybe HOSTEL and stuff, but I thought it was a decent movie, if you watch it for that visceral gore and don’t, it’s essentially a horror movie, so you shouldn’t be looking into it like it’s SCHINDLER’S LIST.

Fango: What it is too is that yeah, it was really derivative but they just threw so much in there of what they derived from, it was so much fun, so much went down in that movie.

Jeff: Exactly, like those PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS things, those little kids, the weird babies. I thought it was a good movie man, and like I said, I’m really pumped on French horror films, so anything they put out, is pretty awesome, because I think right now, American horror films, they just keep remaking things. Like QUARANTINE? [REC] didn’t need a remake.

Fango: Exactly, [REC] was one of the best movies I think I’ve seen in the past ten years.

Jeff: Yea! And what bums me out, is, fine you’re going to make a remake, totally cool, but at least release the original film for people to watch.

Fango: It’s finally coming out in a week or two on DVD.

Jeff: It’s finally going to come out on DVD? Alright, that’s pretty sweet then. There’s another movie I saw, not really a horror movie, it’s called BIG MAN JAPAN.

Fango: I haven’t seen it yet, but I keep hearing it’s so good.

Jeff: Dude, it is awesome, it’s so good. The F/X, it’s funny, it’s like a mockumentary movie.

Fango: Did you see LET THE RIGHT ONE IN?

Jeff: Dude, I’m reading the book right now.

Fango: So am I.

Jeff: Oh, so tell me if this is a little bit weird to you, you’ve seen the movie, I kind of like the kid that’s portrayed in the movie, a little bit better than the kid portrayed in the book. That’s my only thing, I’m not that far into the book right now.

Fango: The kid in the book, is kind of obnoxious at times.

Jeff: Seriously, it’s a little bit much, his obsession with murder. It’s weird ‘cause he falls in and out of his obsession. At the beginning, he seems like this little creepy ass kid who just wants to kill stuff, and then it goes away, it’s not cohesive, but then he’ll come back again with wanting to kill people. But I thought it was awesome and it’s cool because we recorded in Sweden and it looks and feels like Sweden.

Fango: Did you see that Swedish movie, COLD PREY?

Jeff: No.

Fango: It’s a cool slasher, it’s the first one I’ve seen in a while that’s pretty serious throughout, it’s not wacky or winking, it’s pretty good.

Jeff: Did you see DEAD SNOW, was that any good?

Fango: I didn’t like it so much, the gore was really good in it, but all the characters are super obnoxious, and the whole movie is full of references, but a lot of them aren’t that funny, it’s just kind of like, “Hey, we all have the same DVD collection.”

Jeff: Ah, okay. Because I saw a trailer and immediately it was like, sweet tribal nu-metal music playing over everything. Did you see that UK movie, SEVERANCE, that was pretty good.

Fango: You know what was cool, so that you could see some American horror, did you see THE SIGNAL last year?

Jeff: No.

Fango: It’s excellent, it’s three directors and three kind of episodes and this transmission on the radio and TV makes everyone go crazy on New Year’s Eve, but not like zombie crazy, it’s more perception. You’ll have a conversation and think it’s completely rational to kill the person you’re with.

Jeff: Alright, COLD PREY and THE SIGNAL. I just got a DVD by Nacho Cerda, AFTERMATH and I forget the name of the second one. It’s supposed to be really awesome, I haven’t seen it yet, but the first film is a coroner messing with a body and he’s a surgeon. I’ve read a bunch of stuff, and I know he’s done a lot of really cool movies. I think it’s supposed to show you how vulnerable you are, even if you’re dead, because of what somebody can do to your body. I guess this dude ends up doing a bunch of really horrible things to this corpse. I think I might watch it tonight now that I talked about it. I’m pumped dude, Ryan asked me the other day, “Hey, you want to do an interview for Fangoria?” I was like, “Are you serious? They do music stuff? If anybody’s doing the interview, I’m doing it. Real quick, what do you think about Steven Spielberg and Will Smith ruining OLDBOY?

Fango: I am in no way excited about that, OLDBOY is perfect, although I do like LADY VENGEANCE better.

Jeff: Dude I love SYMPATHY and LADY VENGEANCE but I just have a thing with OLDBOY. It effected me so heavily the first time I saw it, it’s one of my favorite films.

Fango: The thing about Will Smith though, is he’s already all built and brolic, and the whole thing with OLDBOY, in the beginning he’s like a drunk fat schlub. They need to get someone who you wouldn’t believe would turn into this whole badass.

Jeff: Yo, Gary Oldman, man.

Fango: That would be insane. Did you see that movie he was in BACKWOODS, it was a Spanish production, I think, barely got any play here, it was direct to DVD, but it’s this revenge movie that he’s in and he’s super badass.

Jeff: Next time I talk to you, I will have seen it. I’ve just been watching movies like crazy.

Fango: That’s pretty much all I do, that’s what’s so gnarly about working at Fango, watching horror movies and getting stoked on them.

Jeff: I’m pretty jealous, want to trade jobs?

Fango: I might be able to.

Jeff: Let’s go, we’ll trade, you can go rock and hang out with these dudes for a couple of towns, and I’ll go hang out with Fangoria.

Fango: But if we traded, Purple Sabbath might have to be in the set every night. That song is one of the best Poison the Well songs ever.

Jeff: We were actually playing it, we just did a tour in February with 36 Crazyfists. We played it in Australia. I think it’s just; kids who never heard our stuff don’t get it. But I agree, I think that song rules. I’m not trying to, I’m not a dude to stroke anything but I think it’s a really cool song. We’re trying to throw some songs from those EP’s into our set. I know some kids like those songs.

Fango: Those EP’s were really cool.

Jeff: Yea, I never thought these dudes would agree on putting them out as B-sides because everybody was so against those songs when we finished recording VERSIONS, but I think it’s cool that with time everybody kind of accepted them as, it’s not that they were bad songs, they just didn’t fit on the record. It was a nice opportunity to do something with songs that would’ve normally just rotted away. Because we have songs from YOU COME BEFORE YOU we never used, and are just sitting on our computers, we’ve never released them. Maybe one day we’ll release them.

Fango: Do a Poison the Well B-sides album? You could do that Deftones thing, put a bunch of b-sides then cover a bunch of random 80’s, Duran Duran songs.

Jeff: It’s funny, last night I woke up, we were driving from North Carolina to Philly and our drummer was listening to that Deftones, Sade cover. It’s pretty good. I haven’t heard it in a long time, but it’s pretty good.

Fango: One of my favorite times seeing you guys, was you and Deftones.

Jeff: We were talking about that the other day because for some reason, I was under the impression for like 2 or 3 years that that tour did nothing for us. ‘Cause it ended up that the tour was like, they wanted us to charge too much for our merch. We had never charged more than like, ten dollars for our t-shirts, and so going on that tour, they were all, “you have to price match us, and so t-shirts were $30 and hoodies were $50-$60.

Fango: Deftones, their merch is always through the roof.

Jeff: I think it’s ‘cause they sold their rights to a merch company or something like that, and the company sells the merch for them and prices it. So that tour we were like, “Forget it, we’re not going to sell any merch.” We barely sold any. Not that that would’ve affected if kids liked us or not, but it just felt like very separate. But in the last two years I’ve noticed that a lot of kids are saying the first time they saw us was on the Deftones tour. I have to thank the Deftones for taking us out because it actually did help our band a lot.

Fango: That tour was badass; that was one of those dream pairings. When I was younger, I used to think it’d be sick if Deftones and Poison the Well went on tour and then you did and you came out and did Max Cavalera’s part in “Headup”.

Jeff: What was funny about that was Chi asked me to do it once. I think his voice or throat hurt one night and he’s like, “Hey man, you think that you could do this part for me.” And I was like, “Yea that would be awesome.” I’m a big Deftones fan, I was all nervous and thought I was going to mess it up, and then it turned into an everyday thing. Some days, I’d be tired from playing, and just want to chill and like clockwork, one of Deftones crew would be like, “Yo Jeff, come out, it’s your part!” And I was like, “I just want to chill man, I didn’t know I had to do it everyday.” It was awesome though. It was, at least for me, a really big honor for them to have asked me to go on stage and sing a part for them and trust me enough not to mess it up.

Fango: Alright man, I’ve kept you for like 40 minutes, so I don’t want to keep you too long.

Jeff: It’s all good man. We’re eating cheese steaks, but I left my cheese steak over there ‘cause I have to pace when I talk on the phone.

Fango: I’ve never had a real cheese steak from Philly.

Jeff: They’re pretty good man, though I just got berated because I said I wanted Cheez Wiz and everybody was like, “Nah, you’ve got to get it with Provolone.” But I like the shitty Cheez Wiz.

Fango: I didn’t know the Cheez Wiz was a thing, I’ve got to get on that.

Jeff: Yea man, you can get it “with Wiz”, I think they call it, or with provolone and I guess there’s a big separation between people who eat it with Wiz. They’re pretty serious about the cheese steaks in Philly.

Fango: Alright, well thanks so much for talking. I’m stoked for the show, between you guys and I’m a big fan of This is Hell too, so I’m excited to see them do their thing.

Jeff: And they’re sweet dudes, which makes their band even better. Thank you very much, I think you’ve made my life, being interviewed for FANGORIA.

And with that, Moreira was off. I can’t thank him and Poison the Well enough for the interview. THE TROPIC ROT is out now and is absolutely album of the year material, so go check it out.

You can get more Poison the Well info, and listen to the new album at www.myspace.com/poisonthewell.


Rome, Italy Photo by Sam Walker | 10 for 10 rehearsal Photo by JK Yearrick | BW Wolverhampton, England photo by Birmingham Live!

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