Reviews list for Coalesce - OX (2009)

Coalesce has been an impressive band that fits in the mathcore Big 4 along with Converge, Botch, and The Dillinger Escape Plan. Their chaotic take on metallic hardcore is highly influential in math-grind abrasion that later bands can play but never replicate the master. Former and current band members were in other projects that would later spawn a new melodic emotional side of Coalesce. The resulting deep cacophonic sludge swamp is rewarding but doesn't the reach the reign of their original era...

I'm writing my review for this album of demented growls and frets at a time when the band is long-gone. It's not easy accepting that a band this good would now be nothing but a distant memory, but I still have a grasp on the band's rage and some of this strange experimentation.

"The Plot Against My Love" starts with the usual furious barks of Sean Ingram, beginning the album almost like Botch's last full album, though at a lower mid-tempo pace closer to heavy hardcore. For the first time ever for this band, clean singing occurs in "The Comedian in Question". And again in the intro for "Wild Ox Moan", which actually sounds like a stoner-infused Alice in Chains before it gets broken apart by the usual chaos that has shaped up the band's career. "Designed To Break A Man" is almost literally what that title says, with powerful distortion in the mid-paced drums, bass, and guitar, the latter having their signature sludge-ish riffing, crazier than The Jesus Lizard. "Where Satires Sour" is a brief acoustic interlude that lasts under a minute.

The speed is picked up by "The Villain We Won't Deny". More of this stylistic experimentation is presented in "The Purveyor Of Novelty And Nonsense", which integrates earlier Western music history into their sludge. Try speeding your Ford car up a ramp over a river to the other side while listening to that track! Next up, "In My Wake, For My Own" brings back some of the noise from their 90s era, this time with bluesy guitar jangle and falsetto chants that sound like a little kid choir. The instrumentation sounds grungy, but the gang-led shouting is still around. Then it briefly drops into more chanting, this time from Gregorian monks. "New Voids in One's Resolve" has excellent bass.

"We Have Lost Our Will" is another pretty interlude, here with acoustic melancholy and soft xylophone. It's like a spot-on image of the band's tumbleweed-infested home of Kansas City. The madness leads on in "Questions to Root Out Fools" with riff/vocal passion. "By What We Refuse" has lyrics the earlier fans might agree to. "Dead is Dead" deconstructs its chaos smoothly into a marching ballad. "There is a Word Hidden in the Ground" is a h*lla crushing slow closer, a brilliant favorite of mine to end it all!

Nothing too bad for the band's true swansong album. It's interesting enough to satisfy me. Their intensity has been decelerated by some of the experimentation, but it all worked pretty well in the end. And with that, the crazy career of Coalesce has closed.....

Favorites: "The Plot Against My Love", "Wild Ox Moan", "Designed To Break A Man", "The Purveyor Of Novelty And Nonsense", "In My Wake, For My Own", "Questions to Root Out Fools", "There is a Word Hidden in the Ground"