Review by Saxy S for Colosseum - Chapter 2: Numquam (2009)

Now that my schedule has cleared up for the next couple of days, I can finally get to reviewing that new Protest the Hero album, but that will have to wait until tomorrow. Ever since joining Metal Academy, I have made it a goal of mine to listen to more metal in 2020 than I did in 2019, which should not be all that hard considering how much metal I actually ended up listening to during the year, minus my retrospective binge in January.

Another goal of mine was to listen to different subsections of the metal tag that I normally would not give the time of day. And this feels appropriate. Colosseum were a Finnish Funeral Doom metal band of the late 2000s most prominent remembered for their principal members being apart of the band Yearning. I chose this album because our good friend Sonny92's review was selected to the front page of RYM and I figured it was a good a time as any to cross something different off of my list (don't worry, the PTH album review will come tomorrow).

My distaste of this particular subgenre is the lack of melodic focus. On the opposite side of the spectrum, technical death metal has many of the same compositional tropes of funeral doom metal, in which melody is scorned at in favour of tempo, depending on the genre. With Colosseum, their is melody, quite a lot of it actually. And some of the individual songs on this album are quite impressive in scale. Since many of the tunes are relatively shorter to other funeral doom metal groups, Colosseum use the time they have been given effectively, giving these songs some much needed staying power.

The first half of this record is very well executed. "Towards the Infinite" and "The River" are two excellent standouts that exemplify the shorter songwriting's benefits to a tea. The string and synth embellishments throughout the record, but most prominently on the first half of "Prosperity" sound great. They have their own unique melodic flare at times have a very good overall sound, never feeling compromised by the thick guitars. As for the guitars, they are pretty good as well. I wish that they could have had some more melodic importance rather than serving as an extension of the rhythm section. As for the rhythm section, they sound decent enough; but then again, what did I expect from funeral doom metal. At least they sound good and carry these tunes forward.

Unfortunately the second half of this record drags on for far too long. I've already spoken about the excellent first half of "Prosperity" and that carries over into "Narcosis" as well, but the end of these songs just sort of...fizzle out and they spend their time simmering in whatever resido they can find. And the "Outro" sounds like a pretentious sound collage. It sounds nice from a production standpoint, but really leaves the album ending on a not so good foot.

If there is anything I can gather from this record, it is that Colosseum had potential. Their shorter song structures and focus on melody were big stepping stones that could actually make this music sound memorable. Unfortunately that never happened, and one of the members of this group would give in and commit suicide in 2010. If there were more artists creating funeral doom like this, I would be more intrigued in the genre. But for now, I'll take what I can get and this album is pretty solid.