Poison Album: “Native Tongue”

1993's Native Tongue is something of the black sheep of the Poison catalogue. The famous party rockers were faced with two obstacles when recording this album - the departure of guitarist C.C DeVille and the rise of grunge. Overcoming the first obstacle wasn't too tough. C.C, for all his style, wasn't the greatest guitar player and his replacement, Ritchie Kotzen, was a real talent. The second obstacle was a bit trickier. What does a party rock band do when the party ends?

Poison didn't try to go grunge with this album (thankfully), but they did try to get more serious. In this case, that meant a sharp turn into blues rock territory. We caught a couple of hints of that on 1990's

, but it's way more prominent on Native Tongue. I assume Kotzen, who has some serious blues chops, had a lot to do with that. For a band like Cinderella, the bluesy sound makes sense, but from a band whose previous hits champion looking for "Nothin' But a Good Time," it's a little awkward. There are some fun rock songs here (like "Ain't That the Truth), and the minor hit "Stand" sounds a bit like "Something To Believe In," but for the most part the songs on Native Tongue, technically sound as they are, just don't excite. It didn't help that most of Poison's fanbase was being told that what they used to like was impossibly uncool and that grungy, flannel-clad Seattle bands where what they needed to listen to.

I was a big fan of Poison growing up, and still play their albums from time to time, but Native Tongue rarely gets taken off the shelf. It's a perfectly solid blues-based rock album, but it just doesn't feel like a Poison album. I'd recommend it only to completists or Kotzen fans.

By the time Poison released their fourth album "Native Tongue", the musical world Poison was accustomed to was literally turned on its head. Long time guitarist C.C. Deville had been kicked out of the band, and was subsequently replaced by guitar virtuoso Richie Kotzen. Also by 1993, Poison's brand of pop-metal was about as popular as constipation, it was replaced by flannel-clad grunge bands, and the commercial rise of hip-hop music.

When you first listen to this record you hear a pretty big shift in musical directions for Poison. Poison wasn't jumping on the grunge bandwagon in any way, but they overhauled their sound to incorporate a more blues based sound, and centered it on and around Kotzen's guitar playing. While i'm sure most Poison fans aren't huge "Native Tongue" junkies, the album is actually pretty strong throughout. Every song is enjoyable and had hit potential, but the massive shift in sound is why i'm sure most people kicked this record to the curb. Even though this isn't "Flesh & Blood" or "Open Up And Say Ahh", it does still have some great tracks on it. My favorites are "Ride Child Ride (which is also my favorite Poison song)", "7 Days Over You", "Strike Up The Band", "The Scream" and "Until You Suffer Some".

My summary of this record is quite simple, Poison wanted to stay relevent in the 90's rock scene, however that wasn't as easy as it seemed. You see most Poison fans wanted the band to stay glued to their 80's roots, and never change a thing, but Poison knew those days were long gone. I'm sure we've all heard the old saying, if you ain't growing, you're dying!

This album was a very controversial one when it came out in the nineties, because the band changed style with Native Tongue, passing from a very cheesy, bubble gum, party type of hair metal to true, serious music. Serious that by no means means boring, but on the contrary "music with serious value", with serious quality. It was controversial even because it came out in a difficult decade for the music, the one that saw the end for a lot of hair metal bands and the beginning of the grunge era. So I guess that a lot of people who loved hair metal took a position against this album because they tought that Poison, the epitome of hair metal sold themselves to jump on the grunge winner wagon. So it is an album that was born in a very hard time. maybe it was not the right choice for the band I don't know, but at the time probably it was the only thing they could do with CC that was almost a Junkie unable to play anymore and grunge rapidly overlapping their original style. So what could they do? Probably one of the wisest thing to do could be to invest in the quality of their music, on the true value of music trying to maintain their identity, but injecting in their formula a sort of hyper fuel. And they did. It was the only serious thing they could do to survive. Try to imagine if they chose to release another album like "Open up and say ah!"... probably the whole world would have judged them CLOWNS in those years. So they took one of the guitar youngest and brightest stars, one with a killer look, the ability to write killer songs, incredible guitar chops and with a bluesy style that could take them to new places, to new more serious, more value music. A very good idea it was. And which kind of album cam out from this chance they took? A very strong album, made entirely by Richie Kotzen's songs at the point that now that we have a lot of Kotzen songs albums, now we know that Native Toungue came out entirely by his pen. A very strong blues infected album with killer songs and more that few true ANTHEMS that sold very well and had great hairplay and videoplay if I remember well by the way (Stand, Until you suffer some). And the album stood the test of time, a lot better than any album of their no matter what the die hard fans of the band may say. It is a killer album that trascended the genre boundaries and took the guys in a land they never were legitimate to enter, the true value music. I love all the albums from the band even the cheesiest ones, but Native tongue stays way way above the others in terms of songwriting qualities, musical values, attitude, musical chops, consistency. By the way in my opinion this is even one of the best album from Richie Kotzen ever in my opinion, a lot better than his albums from Mr Big era and a lot better than some of his solo albums (very good albums by the way). This one and Mother Heads (the best form Richie in my rating) stand on the same very high quality level. I think a lot of people who hate hair metal could love this album and a lot of people who love it could love it too. But this album is not a bi**h. It has value, personality and integrity. Too bad the guys decided to fire Richie for a stupid story. The band could do very good things if they continued to be together. The next guitarist the band decided to try (the fabolous Blues Saraceno) for different reasons didn't success in taking a comparable contribution to the band. Native toungue is a true treasure for me.

I like when a band spends a good time in studio working to get really good stuff. This album is evolution, the blues songs are great and the introduction of female chorus fits great on the type of ballads it has.

Won't get bored of this one.

With this CD I discovered something. Original formula always works better. With Ritchie Kotzen on guitar instead of C.C.Deville it was just a shade weaker. The original line-up still tours together and I see them as often as I can, you just can't beat them. While this CD did have a few really good songs, I just couldn't stand behind it. Of course I have it to complete my collection, but listening to all Poison CD's then listening to this one, you can pick up that something is just off. Great effort, but original is always better.