Poison - Native Tongue

The record that asked the most of Poison, made under the most difficult circumstances, and has taken thirty years to receive the reassessment it always deserved. Released on February 9, 1993 on Capitol Records, Native Tongue arrived at one of the most turbulent moments in the band's history and at one of the most turbulent moments in rock music, the glam metal era giving way almost overnight to the grunge revolution that had rendered the Sunset Strip sound commercially obsolete almost overnight.

The circumstances behind the album are the stuff of rock legend. C.C. DeVille, Poison's original guitarist and one of the most recognizable stylists of the hair metal era, had been fired from the band following a chaotic MTV Video Music Awards performance in 1991. His replacement was Richie Kotzen, a classically trained virtuoso whose deep roots in blues and funk pulled the band in an entirely new direction. The result is the most musically ambitious and sonically sophisticated record Poison ever made, a harder-edged, bluesier, and more soulful album that bears little resemblance to the party-ready anthems that made them famous and is all the better for it.

Bret Michaels, Rikki Rockett, and Bobby Dall rose to meet Kotzen's elevated musicianship at every turn. "Stand" is a soul-infused powerhouse. "Until You Suffer Some (Fire and Ice)" and "Body Talk" showcase a band pushing their limits with genuine conviction. The album peaked at number sixteen on the Billboard 200 but was swallowed by the cultural moment it arrived in, critically dismissed and commercially underwhelming in a year when grunge dominated everything.

Now, for the first time on vinyl, Native Tongue gets the presentation it always deserved. A genuine sleeper in one of the era's most beloved catalogs, finally ready to be heard on its own terms.