Poison Idea – “Confuse & Conquer” [Album Review]

Back in the ’80s when I was a young lad just discovering the world of punk and metal, one band used to really fucking scare me. I’ve no idea why – I’d never heard them and I didn’t know that much about them, but they really terrified me! That band was Portland scumbags Poison Idea. So here I am in 2015, giving their new album a spin praying that it doesn’t give me flashbacks to the ’80s!

Well, on a more serious note, the band are now 35 years into their career and, despite tragedy hitting the group with the death of long-time guitarist Pig Champion, the Portland outfit have soldiered on with the result being Confuse & Conquer, their first new material since Pig Champion’s death. Give it a spin and you’ll find that Confuse & Conquer is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand there are tracks like “Me & JD” where the album is absolutely everything you would want from a Poison Idea album – a grubby, filthy, fuck-you sounding cocktail of punk, rock, thrash and hardcore. However, there is another side to this record like the country-inspired “Dead Cowboy” where Poison Idea step outside their comfort zone with the sort of curveball that demonstrates a real “couldn’t give a fuck” attitude.

35 years is a long time to be blasting out the sort of bile-soaked punk rock that Poison Idea have been doing and, curveballs aside, Confuse & Conquer continues that legacy. You even get the feeling that somewhere, Pig would be looking down and he’d be mighty proud of that legacy!

Track Listing:

01. Bog
02. Me & JD
03. Psychic Wedlock
04. Hypnoptic
05. Trip Wire
06. I Don’t Know You
07. Cold Black Afternoon
08. The Rhythm’s Of Insanity
09. Dead Cowboy
10. Beautiful Disaster
11. Reprise

Run Time: 34:39
Release Date: April 6, 2015

Check out the album ‘Confuse & Conquer’ here.