Review by Greg on June 18, 2025.

Sharing your name with a Municipal Waste song might not be a total coincidence when you play crossover thrash. Nevertheless, the four young Colombian dudes in Poison The Preacher have entered the scene with a massive bang, read: their defiantly titled first LP Vs The World.

Now, I've probably said it before, but ever since Power Trip hit it big (wait, what do you mean Manifest Decimation was released 12 YEARS AGO?!), there's been a welcome resurgence of a more stripped-down, raw form of the genre, as opposed to the stale copycats trying to ride the coattails of the 'Waste, obviously with a minuscule fraction of their riffing prowess. Poison The Preacher is the latest addition to this list, channeling Enforced's more pronounced death metal tendencies and kicking it a notch further due to their penchant for nasty breakdowns, clearly written with the live setting in mind. 'Dying Every Day' even hosts Sanguisugabogg's vocalist Devin Swank, and is unsurprisingly the most caveman-esque of the lot, but it's not to say Vs The World lacks in the good ol' scorchers – quite the contrary, indeed. They're just employed in a less pervasive way, but they sure know when to strike. And man, do they strike hard... way more than your average upcoming group of total nobodies, that's for sure. It helps that Juan Pablo Carrera's vocals are another valuable asset, as he's arguably the closest Riley Gale (R.I.P.) impersonator I've come across during all these years, and it goes without saying that I mean it as a massive compliment, as he automatically boosted the music's aggression every time he opened his mouth.

As I was reaching the halfway point, the words of the promo kit kept ringing in my head: 'the band fuses brutal riffs with jazz, traditional Colombian music [...] a Latin American heartbeat', and I was genuinely wondering if it was written for a different album, or if the definitions of 'jazz' and 'Latin' had moved without my knowledge – this looks like, y'know, the most American shit ever made, or close. Instead, 'Hate Too Much' is introduced by an eerie piano section and later goes through a short bass interlude, and the subsequent 'Congelado En El Tiempo' even starts with a tribal-esque percussion intro, as well as featuring Spanish lyrics (along with '1312'), so there's something to it. Granted, I can picture somebody saying they're just gimmicky additions, added in order to desperately stand out from the pack. I'm not one of them, actually: I find them integrated enough, and the songs themselves wouldn't be damaged anyway, as they're probably the best of both Poison The Preacher worlds – respectively a super-fast, cavernous hardcore number, and a massively cool midtempo track. I wasn't a fan of the pick scrapes in 'One Man Army', but it's another absolutely menacing, tough motherfucker of a song. I don't know if I'm more amused by its Rage Against the Machine-like solo or its 'Raining Blood'-esque ending, with another gnarly breakdown in the middle. Probably the latter, since it follows what's pretty much a 'Postmortem' break in 'Promise To Pay'.

Vs The World might not be an essential listening, but it does exactly what this subgenre should do – be brutally aggressive for the whole playing time, wreck a couple of your vertebrae every once in a while when the bpm suddenly double, and hopefully stir concertgoers' most primal instincts with ease. I don't have first-hand experience of this last point, but I'm eager to find out.

Rating: 8 out of 10